Classic WW2 naval account back in print for the first time in fifty years

Robert Harling’s book The Steep Atlantick Stream, first published in 1946, is now back in print for the first time in fifty years, after being republished by Seaforth Publishing. In an introduction commissioned for this new edition, Professor Emeritus Derek Law describes the book as:

“a classic, absorbing and realistic work which more than almost any other Second World War naval memoir leaves the reader with an unforgettable impression of what the war at sea was really like for those who served in the small ships, almost continually facing the enemy, rather than serving their time in fleet anchorages awaiting action.”

The book will be published in North America by Lyons Press, who acquired the rights from Seaforth.

The Steep Atlantic Stream follows another exceptional work by Harling that has been published posthumously, Ian Fleming: A Personal Memoir, his account of his friendship with the author of the James Bond novels.

Robert Harling was a key figure in twentieth-century graphic design, editor before the war of Typography and later House & Garden, which he edited between 1957 until his retirement in 1993, and typographic advisor to the Sunday Times for almost forty years. At the start of the war, and being a keen sailor, Harling joined the RNVR and took part in the Dunkirk evacuation, before serving on Atlantic convoy duty. His close friend Ian Fleming later recruited him to 30AU, known as ‘Fleming’s Commandos,’ where he spent the rest of the war operating in naval intelligence and on the front line. He is the author of eighteen books, including half a dozen novels, books on typography, architecture and artists such as Eric Ravilious and Eric Gill, and a memoir of his friendship with Ian Fleming. He died in 2008.