Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford (11 January 1922 – 8 May 1986) was a noted 20th-century British
historian specializing in the
Mediterranean world and naval topics.[1][2][3][4] He was also an authority on antique jewellery and was the founder editor of the Antique Dealers and Collector's Guide.[1][5][6]
Life
Bradford was the son of Jocelyn Ernle Sydney Patton Bradford MBEMC,[7][8] and his wife, Ada Louise Dusgate.[9] He was born in Cole Green,
Norfolk and educated in England at
Uppingham School.[1][10] He served in the
Royal Navy during World War II, initially as an Ordinary Seaman but rising to the rank of first
lieutenant of a
Hunt Class Destroyer.[11]
A keen yachtsman himself, Bradford spent almost 30 years sailing the Mediterranean, and many of his books are set there.[12][13][14] His book, The Journeying Moon describes some of these voyages.[15] It ends with the sale of his
Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter, Mischief, to HW
Bill Tilman, who made a number of significant voyages in it to high latitudes.[16]
A sometime
BBC broadcaster and magazine editor, Bradford was also a prolific author and popular historian, many of his books remaining in print to this day.[9] He regularly wrote letters to the British press, in particular The Times and Country Life, on matters of history and sailing.[17][18]
Bradford lived in
Kalkara, on
Malta for a number of years, this also being where he died, and where a commemorative marble plaque exists to his memory and a street next to his old home is named after him.[9]
List of works
Contemporary
Jewellery and Silver Design (Heywood & Co., 1950).
Four Centuries of European Jewellery (Country Life, 1953).
The Journeying Moon (Jarrolds, 1958); reprinted as: The Journeying Moon:
Sailing into History.
English Victorian Jewellery (Country Life, 1959).
The Mighty Hood: The Life and Death of the Royal Navy's Proudest Ship (Hodder & Stoughton, 1959).[19]
The Wind Off the Island (Hutchinson, 1960); reprinted as: The Wind off the Island: A Portrait of
Sicily and Life on the Mediterranean Sea.
US title: A Wind from the North: The Life of
Henry the Navigator (Harcourt Brace, 1960); UK title: Southward the
Caravels: The Story of Henry the Navigator (Hutchinson, 1961).
The
Great Siege: Malta 1565 (Hodder & Stoughton, 1961); US title: The Great Siege (Harcourt Brace, 1961).
Drake. A Biography (Hodder & Stoughton, 1965); US edition: The Wind Commands Me: A Life of
Sir Francis Drake (Harcourt, 1965); subsequently reprinted as Drake: England's Greatest Seafarer.
(Editor) The Siege of Malta 1565: Translated from the Spanish Edition of 1568 by
Francisco Balbi di Correggio (Folio Society, 1965); reprinted by the Boydell Press, 2011.
Wall of England: The
Channel's 2000 Years of History (Country Life, 1966); USA: Wall of Empire: The English Channel (Barnes, 1966).
The Great Betrayal:
Constantinople 1204 (Hodder & Stoughton, 1967); USA: The Sundered Cross: The Story of the
Fourth Crusade (Prentice Hall, 1967).
The Sultan's Admiral: The Life of
Barbarossa (USA: Harcourt Brace, 1968; UK: Hodder & Stoughton, 1969).
The Shield and the Sword: The
Knights of Malta (HarperCollins, 1972); US edition: The Shield and the Sword: The Knights of St. John, Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta (Dutton, 1973).
^Bradford, Ernle (10 November 2014). Paul the traveller: St. Paul and his world.
OCLC933438606.
^Bradford, Ernle (10 November 2014).
"The Great Ship". Open Road Media – via Open WorldCat.
^Bradford, Ernle (10 November 2014).
"The Journeying Moon". Open Road Media. Archived from
the original on 10 November 2019. Retrieved 10 November 2019 – via Open WorldCat.