As the child of an absent mother and a disapproving father, Charles Cleasby found comfort in solitary games of chess. Many years later, in the house where he grew up and now lives alone, he re-enacts the naval battles of his hero Horatio Nelson, moving model ships as carefully as he once did chess pieces.Having long been convinced of a link between this great man s life and mine , Charles, surrounded by his collection of Nelson memorabilia, begins work on his biography of the Admiral and is unsettled to find that Nelson may not be the perfect leader he s always imagined. To doubt his hero s integrity feels like a terrible betrayal, but if Nelson is not the man Charles thought he was, what does that mean for him?