After completing his doctoral research, Lambert was lecturer in modern international history at Bristol Polytechnic from 1983 until 1987; consultant in the Department of History and International Affairs at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, from 1987 until 1989; senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, from 1989 until 1991; senior lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King's College London from 1996 until 1999, then professor of naval history, from 1999 until 2001; and then Laughton Professor of Naval History, and Director of the Laughton Unit. He served as Honorary Secretary of the Navy Records Society from 1996 until 2005 and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Lambert's work focuses on the naval and strategic history of the British Empire between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War, and the early development of naval historical writing. His work has addressed a range of issues, including technology, policy-making, regional security, deterrence, historiography, crisis-management and conflict. He has lectured on aspects of his work in Australia, Canada, Finland, Denmark and Russia. In addition, he wrote and presented for the BBC the television series War at Sea in 2004. On 1 May 2014 he was awarded the Anderson Medal by the Society for Nautical Research for his book The Challenge: Britain against America in the Naval War of 1812.
Books
Battleships in transition: the creation of the steam battlefleet, 1815–1860, Conway Maritime Press
Warrior: the world's first ironclad, then and now, Conway Maritime Press
Franklin: Tragic Hero of Polar Navigation, Faber and Faber
The Challenge: Britain Against America in the Naval War of 1812, Faber and Faber
Articles
"Preparing for the Russian War: British Strategy; March 1853 – March 1854.", War & Society
"The Naval War" in Pimlott, J.L. & Badsey, S. Eds. The Gulf War Assessed
"Aland, Bomarsund and Anglo-Russian Relations 1815–1854" in Ericsson, K. & Montin, K. eds. I Vedlast Over Skiftet Och Alands Hav
"Seapower 1939–40: Churchill and the Strategic Origins of the Battle of the Atlantic", Journal of Strategic Studies
"Part of a Long Line of Circumvallation to Confine the Future Expansion of Russia: Great Britain and the Baltic 1809 – 1895", in Rystad, Bohme & Carlgren Eds. In Quest of Trade and Security: The Baltic in Power Politics, 1500- 1990
"The Royal Navy 1856–1914: Deterrence and the Strategy of World Power" in Neilson, K. & Errington, J. Navies and Global Defense: Theories and Strategies
"Empire and Seapower: Shipbuilding by the East India Company at Bombay for the Royal Navy 1805–1850" in Les Flottes Des Compagnes des Indes 1600–1857
"Politics, Technology and Policy-Making, 1859–1865: Palmerston, Gladstone and the Management of the Ironclad Naval Race" in The Northern Mariner vol. VIII pp. 9–38
"Responding to the Nineteenth Century: the Royal Navy and the Introduction of the Screw Propeller", History of Technology
"Admiral Sir William Cornwallis" in Le Fevre & Harding, eds., The Precursors of Nelson
"Under the heel of Britannia, the Bombardment of Sweaborg 8–10 August 1855" and "The Syrian Campaign, 1814" in Capt. P. Hore RN ed. Seapower Ashore: 200 Years of Royal Navy Operations on Land
"The Principal Source of Understanding: Navies and the Educational Role of the Past" in Capt. P. Hore, RN, ed., The Hudson Papers Volume 1.
"Australia, the Trent Crisis of 1861 and the strategy of imperial defence" in Stevens, D. & Reeve, J., eds. Southern Trident: Strategy, History and the rise of Australian Naval Power
"Introduction" and "The Slide into War" in Gardiner, Robert, ed. The Naval War of 1812
"General Introduction" and "Introduction Part 2" in James, W. M., The Naval History of Great Britain, During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: Volume 2, 1797–1799
"Winning without Fighting: British Grand Strategy and its Application to the United States, 1815–65" in Lee, Bradford A. & Walling, Karl F., eds. Strategic Logic and Political Rationality
"Introduction" in James, William, Naval Occurrences of The War of 1812
