I'm about halfway through the new revised edition of R.A Burt's British Battleships 1889-1904. A nice reference book with lots of obscure facts (steam trial results, weight breakdowns, armor layouts, metacentric heights, and so on) but what really gets me is the superb quality of the photographs. I'm not sure what the 1988 edition was like, but it looks like many of the pictures for the 2013 edition were scanned directly from the original glass negatives. Some are so crystal-clear you can see every detail of the scroll-work on the early pre-dreadnoughts, the wrinkles in the canvas awnings, individual steps on the ladders, every link of the anchor chains...you get the idea. There's a picture of Renown as a royal yacht in 1905 that was so beautiful my jaw practically hit the table. Can't wait to get my copy of British Battleships 1919-1945 tomorrow.
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