Cornelius Noon, Chief Turret Captain USN

By Anthony Delano

With his master gunner’s eye Cornelius Noon could drop a bird on the wing or punch a five-inch shell through a distant window. He had to flee from the Kentucky hills but his singular gift won him a berth in the United States Navy and swift promotion. When, in 1912, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the navy to take over a key Mexican port Noon’s deadly marksmanship made it possible. But Noon, always a loner, had his own ideas about what his country should be doing. And his educated eye was just as penetrating when came to sizing up the women intrigued by his take-it-or-leave it charm, Mrs Smiley the brash bordello keeper and Leonora the cool diplomatic wife who seduced him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony Delano
• Release date: Jul 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370091256

Anthony Delano

Anthony Delano went to London from Australia after an early newspaper career there and was soon a foreign correspondent for the Daily Mirror, which at that time sold nearly five million copies daily. He was stationed in Rome during the Dolce Vita days, in Paris when General De Gaulle was dismantling the French empire, then the United States where he covered, among many other dramas, the civil rights campaign and the assassination of President John Kennedy. Additional assignments took him all over the globe: wars in Africa and the Middle East, tours with the Queen and other members of the Royal Family; most hazardous of all, perhaps, the historic Beatles tour of America. In between there were executive stints in London. He was managing editor of the Mirror when the monstrous tycoon Robert Maxwell took it over. Clearly time to go. He began to teach journalism and research it academically, gaining first a Master’s degree at Queensland University of Technology then a PhD from the University of Westminster (his 2001 doctoral thesis, The Formation of the British Journalist 1900-2000, is widely cited). He became a senior lecturer, senior research fellow and finally visiting professor at the London College of Communication. He lives in the South of France, married to Patricia, a literary scholar.

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