This is the book that I would have loved to have written myself! Cyril Tawney and myself are not contempories, he being some 10 years longer in the tooth than myself, but our ways did unknowingly cross in 1958 at H.M.S. Collingwood whilst I was a baby Greenie still under instruction and he was a venerable ERA about to buy himself out.
I started my collecting songs myself a few years later when joining 23 Petty Officer's Mess on H.M.S. Victorious. My efforts were pretty desultry and limited to a few renderings performed my fellow mess members. On leaving the sevice in 1968 my few notes were banished to my ditty box where they remain to this day. I never did write that book, but I did start a website.
The book is beautifully illustrated with anecdotes galore. One tiny niggle is that that it is not very practical for actually playing and singing from. This book is a must for musical matelots.
