Horatio Nelson was born in Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk, close to the coast on September 29, 1758. He was the son of the reverend Edmund Nelson and his mother was Catherine Suckling, who came from a far more influential family than her husband. Her grandmother was the sister of George II's powerful minister Sir Robert Walpole. Horatio's mother died when he was nine, an event, he said, which would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Nelson had a passionate belief in his ability to become a hero. In 1771, he joined HMS Raisonnable, a ship commanded by his uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, as a midshipman. As a 12-year-old boy, he began what was to be a lifetime's experience at sea. At 16, he had learned all the basics of seamanship and by the time he was 21, he had travelled the world and become a captain - one of the youngest in the Royal Navy. These early experiences laid the foundation for the rest of his successful career and great victories against France, Spain and the Netherlands.

A born leader

These triumphs would have been helped by Nelson's legendary management and leadership skills. He was able to stop a mutiny by sheer force of character alone, and established a blend of discipine with a sympathetic approach that was based on mutual trust. He knew all his crew by name and they, in turn, knew exactly what was expected of them. This, in turn, inspired loyalty.

Nelson referred to his fellow officers as his "band of brothers" and when he died at Trafalgar, even the toughest sailors broke down and cried.

Only human

There is no doubt that Nelson was intelligent, energetic, patriotic and aggressive, but he also had personal problems and traits which many of his contemporaries thought of as weaknesses. To naval officers used to concealing "unmanly" feelings, he was quite emotional, while to others he seemed pretentious. Lord Minto summed it up well five weeks before Nelson died, saying, "He is in many points a really great man, in others a baby."

Like most people, Nelson wanted approval – affection from those he loved and rewards from those he served. But above all he was motivated by ambition: both to achieve the highest honours open to him and to find fulfilment in his personal life. Those around him were well aware of his problems – his instability and mood swings. Charm, courage and success seemed to make amends for this but he was not a generally happy man except when at sea, preoccupied with the war and his duties and surrounded by others also separated from domestic society.

Any descriptions of Nelson's appearance make him sound like a unlikely hero. In the course of wars with the French, he fought in more than 120 engagements, losing both an arm and an eye and suffering all manner of injuries. Nelson was fragile-looking and his face, even when bronzed by the sea winds and scarred by battle, was hardly the face of a war-leader. He had pouting lips, boyish eyes and messy hair.

Selfish or shrewd?

Nelson's quest for glory sometimes made him self-absorbed or prone to ignoring the wishes of others. It was the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 that he famously disobeyed orders by purposely putting a telescope to the eye that had been blinded some years before at the battle of Calvi in Corsica. This was so he couldn't see the signal to withdraw. He went on to defeat the Danes.

As well as having a stubborn streak, Lord Nelson was a renowned self-publicist who made sure that every detail of his conquests were relayed back home.

The love of his life

However, there were some aspects of his life that he didn't want made public. Nelson was always interested in women and they had an interest in him. It was in the Caribbean that he met his future wife, Frances Nisbet, who was a widow with a son from her previous marriage. They were married in Nevis in 1787, and returned to Norfolk from the West Indies to begin their married life. However, the marriage was not successful or long-lasting. The couple separated after Nelson began a passionate affair with the real love of his life, Lady Emma Hamilton. Click here to find out more about Nelson and Emma.

Later, some Victorians with high morals found it a bit difficult to deal with the hero's scandalous private life, even with his glorious reputation. Even so, neither Lord Nelson's infidelity nor his huge vanity has affected his iconic status with the vast majority of the public.