Richard Humphreys has been a bookseller for 20 years but from 1985 to 1990 he served in the Royal Navy and spent his career on the Polaris submarines, which carried nuclear ballistic missiles.

This is his first book and is a compelling and fascinating memoir of life in a 430ft x 33ft steel tube, 300ft underwater, with 140 other people, for up to 90 days at a time, with no possibility of escape.

It's an extraordinary account in which life is as bad, and worse, as you might imagine. Aside from the claustrophobia and disorientation, there's the boredom and lack of privacy, the constant dread of discovery by the Soviets...and the terrible smells!

It's an astonishing page-turner of a book and I have been left in awe, and slightly bemused, by the people who can live this life.