Lord Nelson

Nelson was the almost perfect hero, not only a fearless fighter, brilliant tactician and great admiral, but so loved that when he died at Trafalgar, while devastating the combined French and Spanish fleets, his fleet ``forgot its vic tory in an astonishing spontaneous outburst of grief.'' His failings were a boyish vanity and an unfaithfulness to his wife. Though Nelson is the subject of many previous biographies, David Howarth ( The Voyage of the Armada, 1066 ) and Stephen Howarth ( The Knights Templar ) write of him here with a verve and intimacy of detail that make their book as appealing as the admiral himself. They trace his life from his birth in a Norfolk parsonage to his early commands in the West Indies, to his remarkable subsequent career, providing intriguing analyses of his greatest victoriesat the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgarand following the entire course of his adulterous passion for Lady Hamilton who, second to duty, was his greatest love. Photos. (Feb.)