Tony Delano wrote the two most important books about the golden age of British Journalism, Slip-Up: How Fleet Street Found Ronnie Biggs and Scotland Yard Lost Him, and Joyce McKinney and the Case of the Manacled Mormon. His fiction is every bit as good.
- William Ham Bevan
A New History Title
The Tinpot Navy
Fascinating stories from Australia's colonial navies and the early Royal Australian Navy, whose untried ships and the eager crew manning them performed feats of great courage in World War I.
Just months before the start of World War I, Winston Churchill withdrew the Royal Navy's most formidable ships from the Pacific. With powerful German cruisers in its northern waters, Australia's fledgling navy needed to step up.
Seasoned foreign correspondent and RAN veteran Anthony Delano has uncovered surprising stories from those days and earlier. The rogue captain ready to bombard Brisbane. The quick-witted officer who snatched Germany's secret codes. The bold raid on Rabaul and the capture of German colonies across the Pacific. A dangerous marauder blockaded in an African river. The courageous volunteers who raided a U-boat haven. The battle between HMAS Sydney and the cruiser Emden that might not have been quite the glorious victory it once seemed. Captain Guy Gaunt, a boy from Ballarat who became a master of intrigue and espionage. The unhappy flagship HMAS Australia and a scandalous mutiny trial...
More Titles
About Anthony Delano
Anthony Delano arrived in London from Australia after an early newspaper career there and was soon a foreign correspondent for the Daily Mirror, which at that time sold nearly five million copies daily. He was stationed in Rome during the Dolce Vita days, in Paris when General De Gaulle was dismantling the French empire, then the United States where he covered, among many other dramas, the civil rights campaign and the assassination of President John Kennedy. Additional assignments took him all over the globe: wars in Africa and the Middle East, tours with the Queen and other members of the Royal Family; most hazardous of all, perhaps, the historic Beatles tour of America. In between there were executive stints in London. He was managing editor of the Mirror when the monstrous tycoon Robert Maxwell took it over. Clearly time to go. He began to teach journalism and research it academically, gaining first a Masters degree at Queensland University of Technology then a PhD from the University of Westminster (his 2001 doctoral thesis, The Formation of the British Journalist 1900-2000, is frequently cited). He became a senior lecturer, senior research fellow and finally visiting professor at the London College of Communication. He lives in the South of France, married to Patricia.