Tim Clayton is a British historian and author specialising in eighteenth-century culture, naval history and military history. A former research fellow at Worcester College, Oxford, he is particularly noted for his expertise in eighteenth-century prints and visual culture; his academic work includes The English Print, 1688–1802. Alongside this scholarly background, Clayton has written and produced television documentaries and developed a reputation for narrative history built from letters, diaries and other contemporary testimony. His military writing ranges from the Seven Years’ War and Napoleonic era to the Second World War.
Several of Clayton’s best-known books were written with Phil Craig. Finest Hour reconstructs Britain’s experience in 1940, while End of the Beginning follows the changing course of the Second World War in 1942, and Trafalgar: The Men, the Battle, the Storm tells the story of Nelson’s victory and the violent storm that followed the battle. Clayton’s own books include Tars: Life in the Royal Navy during the Seven Years War, Sea Wolves: The Extraordinary Story of Britain’s WW2 Submarines, Waterloo: Four Days that Changed Europe’s Destiny and This Dark Business: The Secret War Against Napoleon. Waterloo, which won the 2015 British Army Military Book of the Year, makes extensive use of accounts from all the armies involved to reconstruct the confusion and violence of the 1815 campaign. Clayton’s books are historical non-fiction, particularly relevant to British naval history, the Napoleonic Wars, Waterloo and the Second World War.
