Thomas Hardy Naval Officer A British naval officer closely associated with Adm. Horatio (afterward Viscount) Nelson, two of whose flagships he commanded during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. A sailor from 1781, he met Nelson in the mid-1790s, while the future hero of Trafalgar was still a captain. After Nelson’s victory over the French in the Battle of the Nile (Aug. 1, 1798), Hardy... 

Thomas Hardy the Writer Weymouth is a site of worldly pleasure in Thomas Hardy’s writing and is more or less the antithesis to Egdon Heath and other desolate areas. The town’s importance stemmed from the patronage of King George III, who spent his summers here, in his later years. In the afterglow of this regal splendour, Weymouth became the choice holiday resort in the south. Diggory Venn in The...