Each year the Hudson Trust awards a fellowship to a Royal Navy or Royal Marines officer, to conduct research in Oxford for one year. The Hudson Fellows also join CCW as Visiting Research Fellows.

Captain Chris O’Flaherty was the 2017-18 Hudson Fellow. He discovered there was very little written about his benefactor. Chris has now thoroughly researched the life of Guy Hudson and has published his biography through The Choir Press. Available for £14.49: https://www.navybooks.com/crash-start.html

In 1940 a first-year student at Oxford gave up his legal studies to serve his country in its time of need. He served with valour and distinction, receiving the Distinguished Service Cross for developing and then delivering battlewinning tactics that protected the flanks of the D-Day landings. But Guy Hudson also saw things that cannot be unseen, and experienced the horrors of war that become tattooed on one’s soul. This is the story of a brave and patriotic sailor who helped sink the German battleship Bismarck, drove his Motor Torpedo Boat into enemy harbours right under the muzzles of Axis guns, and then pioneered radar control procedures for the small torpedo and gun boats that careered across pitch-dark maritime battlefields to guard the Allied landings in northern France. It is also the story of a man who turned to alcohol to control the darker memories created by war, and whose life and business collapsed due to the demon of drink, before he was rescued by his second wife. His legacy now lives on at the University of Oxford through the Guy Hudson Memorial Trust – this biography is his tribute.