Westbury author releases new Cold War book

A DILTON Marsh man, who is a veteran of submarine command, has written his first book on the subject. Captain Dan Conley’s debut book is entitled ‘Cold War Command’.

Dan Conley began his career on board diesel powered vessels before ending up in command of Courageous and Valiant, two of the Navy’s nuclear powered hunter-killer subs during the 1980s. In the 1990s he was the MOD’s director in charge of Trident targeting and was a major player and policy-maker for the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarine strategy.

‘Cold War Command’ is described as the gripping and untold story of the undersea confrontations between the Royal Navy’s hunter-killer submarines and their Soviet counterparts. The author takes us into the secretive world of cold war submarine combat, examining not just the details of strategy and policy, but the fear and apprehension of British submariners as they prepared to confront the colossal might of the Soviet Navy.

It has been published along with co-author Richard Woodman by Pen and Sword Books, a Barnsley-based company which specialises in military history publications.

Dan Conley has written articles for several international journals but ‘Cold War Command’ is his first book.

He explained that it was difficult to write and making the content easy for everyone to understand proved the biggest challenge. The book also had to go through the necessary MOD security clearance route.

A launch event for the book will be taking place at Toppings bookshop in Bath on Tuesday 1st July at 8.00pm.

‘Cold War Command’ is available from Waterstones, Amazon and most other book retailers.