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By Nigel Barraclough
The DVD lasts about 57 minutes, it very much captures the atmosphere of the fleet review day and the photography is excellent. It also covers the air displays, the Son et Lumiere and the fireworks.
If there was a disappointment it didn't cover quite so much of the fleet review as I would have liked but it does include things like the sail past and the Drumbeat Ceremony which the book does not. It doesn't identify every ship in the sequences but that is not that great a loss.
With 133 pages of A4 sized colour plates the book is something you can quietly enjoy over a coffee. It only covers the fleet review and inevitably can't cover things such as the fireworks and the air displays very well. In any case these are best left to a video format. Like the DVD the photography is first class.
Both have their "little gems". The DVD starts off with a wonderful comment about the rain and the fact that crowds did not "give a damn"! The book has a photo of a very self-conscious Ellen McArthur standing in full Royal Navy uniform next to another seaman who is looking at her and obviously thinking: "I know that face but who is it?…."
Sadly, neither includes a plan of which vessel was moored where, or much text of any kind, but the book does at least list the vessels that took part.
Inevitably, neither will capture everything - it simply is not possible and everyone who went there will have their own unique tale of "what happened to them". What both are very good at doing is providing those "extras", which, even if you were there, you will have missed.
If you gave me the choice of only the DVD or the book, I would buy the DVD. It covers both days and has all the advantages of video, which a book can never match, and it contains some "still" pictures as well. But both are worth getting and don't forget:, what in effect you are buying, is a record of something the like of which we will probably never see again.
So where do you get them?
Mail order only, (I think) from: Maritime Books, Lodge Hill, Liskeard, Cornwall. Tel: 01579 343663. Cost (including P&P): Book:: £19.99 (ISBN 1-904459-19-6), DVD: £15.99
I bought them separately, and on both occasions received them within 2 days of placing the order.