'The Ministry of Defence does not comment upon submarine operations' is the standard response of officialdom to enquiries about the most secretive and mysterious of Britain's armed forces, the Royal Navy Submarine Service. Written with unprecedented co-operation from the Service itself and privileged access to documents and personnel, The Silent Deep is the first authoritative history of the Submarine Service from the end of the Second World War to the present. It gives the most complete account yet published of the development of Britain's submarine fleet, its capabilities, its weapons, its infrastructure, its operations and above all - from the testimony of many submariners and the first-hand witness of the authors - what life is like on board for the denizens of the silent deep. Dramatic episodes are revealed for the first time: how HMS Warspite gathered intelligence against the Soviet Navy's latest ballistic-missile-carrying submarine in the late 1960s; how HMS Sovereign made what is probably the longest-ever trail of a Soviet (or Russian) submarine in 1978; how HMS Trafalgar followed an exceptionally quiet Soviet 'Victor III', probably commanded by a Captain known as 'the Prince of Darkness', in 1986. It also includes the first full account of submarine activities during the Falklands War. But it was not all victories: confrontations with Soviet submarines led to collisions, and the extent of losses to UK and NATO submarine technology from Cold War spy scandals are also made more plain here than ever before. In 1990 the Cold War ended - but not for the Submarine Service. Since June 1969, it has been the last line of national defence, with the awesome responsibility of carrying Britain's nuclear deterrent. The story from Polaris to Trident - and now 'Successor' - is a central theme of the book. In the year that it is published, Russian submarines have once again been detected off the UK's shores. As Britain comes to decide whether to renew its submarine-carried nuclear deterrent, The Silent Deep provides an essential historical perspective.

Universally praised for its powerfully authentic depiction of submarine warfare, Run Silent, Run Deep was an immediate success when published in 1955 and shot to the top of best-seller lists nationwide. In 1958, Hollywood adapted the novel for the big screen starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster. The New York Timessaid of the novel, “If ever a book had a ring of reality, this is it . . . combat passages rank with the most exciting written about any branch of the service.” The Saturday Review called the book “a classic,” and many reviewers compared its author to such greats as C. S. Forester and Erich Remarque. Today these accolades still ring true for Edward L. Beach’s gripping first novel of American submariners confronting a formidable Japanese navy in a vicious battle to control the Pacific. Beach’s taut and dramatic narrative, told with the intimacy of a confession, deals with two strong-headed men, Edward Richardson, the commander of the USS Walrus, and his executive officer, Jim Bledsoe. Bound together by wartime duty, the two are divided by jealousy, pride, and love for a beautiful woman. But long after the details of this famous novel fade from memory, what remains with us is a startling realization of the way it was, really was, in the silent service during World War II. Unlike many war novels, here is a story that deals with war from the perspective of command. With fidelity, Beach creates the anguish, agony, and triumphs of command decisions. Commander Richardson embodies all that is fine and human in an excellent naval officer. This is a monument, not to the misfits and the mistakes, but to those men who rose to greatness under the sometimes unbearable tensions of action.

Publisher description

“Fascinating . . . a distinctively well-crafted intelligence-community memoir” by a leader of the US Navy’s clandestine undersea projects (Publishers Weekly). The Cold War was the first major conflict between superpowers in which victory and defeat were unambiguously determined without the firing of a shot. Without the shield of a strong, silent deterrent or the intellectual sword of undersea espionage, that war could not have been won. John P. Craven was a key figure in the Cold War beneath the sea. As chief scientist of the Navy’s Special Projects Office, which supervised the Polaris missile system, then later as head of the Deep Submergence Systems Project (DSSP) and the Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle program (DSRV), he was intimately involved with planning and executing America’s submarine-based nuclear deterrence and espionage activities—considered so important by the Soviets that they assigned a full-time KGB agent to spy on him. Some of Craven’s highly classified activities have been mentioned in such books as Blind Man’s Bluff—but in this memoir, he gives us his own insights into the deadly cat-and-mouse game that U.S. and Soviet forces played deep in the world’s oceans. Craven tells riveting stories about the most treacherous years of the Cold War, including: the near-disaster that almost sent Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered sub, to the bottom of the ocean, taking the Navy’s missile program with it the rivalry between advocates of deterrence and military men and scientists such as Edward Teller, who believed the US had to prepare to win a nuclear conflict with the Soviets the argument that raged in the Navy over the reasons for the tragic loss of Thresher the search for the rogue Soviet sub that became the model for The Hunt for Red October—and what the Navy discovered when it eventually found the sunken boat Craven takes readers inside highly secret programs, sophisticated intelligence operations, salvage operations, and the program’s takeover by the CIA during the Nixon administration. A compelling tale of intrigue, both within our own government and between the US and Soviet navies, The Silent War is a “compelling” account of how the submarine service kept the peace during those dangerous days (Chicago Tribune). “A must-read for those interested in the technology, management, and intelligence-gathering challenges triggered by tense Cold War competition beneath the seas.” —Proceedings of the US Naval Institute

This is the world of the submariner. This is life under pressure. What’s it like to spend three months without sunlight, sharing what little space you have with over a hundred fellow crewmen and more firepower than all the bombs dropped in World War II combined? This is the world of the submariner. This is life under pressure. As a restless and adventurous eighteen-year-old, Richard Humphreys joined the Royal Navy submarine service. For five years during the Cold War, he served on the nuclear sub HMS Resolution. Nothing could have prepared him for life beneath the waves. He existed in a world without natural light, surrounded by 140 other men, all eating the same food, breathing the same air, smelling the same putrid smells and surviving together in some of the most forbidding conditions imaginable. Based on Humphreys’ firsthand experience, Under Pressure is the candid, visceral and incredibly entertaining account of what it’s like to live, work, sleep and eat—and stay sane—in one of the most extreme man-made environments on the planet.

SSN 14 is a dramatic and honest account of a year in the life of HMS Turbulent, the Royal Navy nuclear powered attack submarine led by Ryan Ramsey. During 2011 Turbulent participated in the Libya intervention and passed through the Suez Canal to take up patrol in the Indian Ocean against the extraordinary political backdrop of the Arab Spring, in the period where both Colonel Gaddafi and Osama Bin Laden were killed and piracy and terrorism was rife. Turbulent suffered a catastrophic failure of its cooling systems. The fight to survive tested Ryans command to its limits. Although the suffering was immense, the entire crew survived intact. Ryan also had to deal with constantly changing crew and transform them into a tight-knit, smoothly functioning team that could meet, and exceed, any challenge thrown at them. This books documents his failures, as well as his successes and offers a unique insight into leadership in the most challenging of environments. No matter where your business battles are fought, this will help you be phenomenal at what you do.

**THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** "An unforgettable—and Hollywood-bound—new thriller... A mix of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting, and Greek tragedy." —Entertainment Weekly The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....