CAPTAIN PETER HORE
Captain Peter Hore RN (Retd) joined Dartmouth in 1962. His naval career included exchange service in the US Navy and two tours in NATO’s Standing Naval Force Atlantic. He served as Supply Officer of HMS Jupiter and HMS Galatea, and qualified as an interpreter in Spanish and Swedish and as a linguist in Cantonese.
During the 1982 Falklands War, Peter was Joint Logistics Commander on Ascension Island. He later served as Base Supply Officer in Hong Kong and Plymouth, Military Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Defence Staff (Systems), and Assistant Director of Plans and Programmes, where he helped direct the Royal Navy’s applied research programme. As Head of Defence Studies from 1997 to 2000, he led the Navy’s non-technical research programme and was responsible for researching defence doctrine and facilitating the exchange of views between the defence-academic community and the Ministry of Defence.
Peter retired from the Royal Navy in 2000 and spent nine years as CEO of the Film and TV Fund before becoming a full-time writer, editor and journalist.
He writes reviews and articles for a number of newspapers and journals, including Warships International Fleet Review, where he is Associate Editor. He has written or edited a dozen books on naval history, biography and strategy.
As a freelance obituarist for The Daily Telegraph for almost a quarter of a century, Peter has written some two thousand obituaries, mostly on men and women “with webbed feet”, and is a consultant and contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Society for Nautical Research and the Royal Swedish Society for Nautical Sciences, whose silver medal he was awarded in 2023, and is also a Chartered Member of the Institute of Linguists.
His latest book is No Uncertain Sound: The Life and Times of Admiral Sir Jock Slater.
No Uncertain Sound
No Uncertain Sound by Captain Peter Hore is a deeply researched and authoritative biography of Admiral Sir Jock Slater, one of the most influential figures in modern Royal Navy history. Drawing on extensive archival material, personal diaries, and more than 100 interviews, the book provides a compelling insight into the leadership, strategy, and defence reforms that shaped the British armed forces during the final decades of the Cold War.
Tracing Slater’s distinguished naval career through to his appointment as First Sea Lord from 1995 to 1998, the book explores pivotal moments in the evolution of British naval and air power. It reveals previously untold stories surrounding nuclear defence policy, UK–Russia relations, the development of British Maritime Doctrine, the integration of women at sea, and the ending of the ban on gay personnel in the armed forces.
Rich in historical detail and personal testimony, No Uncertain Sound offers a fascinating portrait of military leadership at the highest level, while also examining Admiral Slater’s relationships with political leaders, senior defence figures, and the Royal Family.
Ideal for readers interested in Royal Navy history, Cold War military strategy, British defence policy and naval leadership. This definitive biography is an essential contribution to modern maritime history and late twentieth-century British military affairs.
