Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower

by C. Northcote Parkinson

Book Overview

Drawn from the Hornblower series as well as from Parkinson's knowledge of the Royal Navy, this classic biography of the popular fictional hero is as entertaining as the C. S. Forester novels... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0760709440
• ISBN13: 9780760709443
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble Books
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Makes you think it really happened!

Fantastic account of Hornblower's life from the age of school, including family background, to his last breath 1857. For a while a started to think that Hornblower after all had existed. This book is well written and fills in the missing parts in an dbetween C.S. Forester's books. Fantastic fictional brography of a fantastic fictional hero - a recommended read and an absolute must read for any Hornblower enthusiast. Let me also recommend other books by the same author featuring 'Richard Delaney' - a naval officer during the Napoleon war. If you like these kind of novels you will problaby enjoy the Bolitho-series by Alexander Kent and the books by Showell Styles.

For Hornblower Fans

This is a reprint of the author's 1970 fictional biography of Horatio Hornblower. C. S. Forester wrote the first five Hornblower novels in chronological order, starting with Hornblower's service as a Royal Navy captain in 1807 and continuing to 1815 when the war ended and most of the Royal Navy was laid up. In the sixth book, he skipped back to cover the beginnings of Hornblower's career as a midshipman. That point seems to have been lost to later authors like O'Brien (who invented ways to keep Aubrey at sea, rather than dropping back to cover his early beginnings).Parkinson created this biography by placing the Forester novels in chronological order, and then adding in details to explain Hornblower's early life, his family, and his years in retirement. It is so well written it is difficult to classify the book as fiction. The recent made-for-TV motion pictures on Hornblower have changed the details of the stories to a significant degree, but are generally following Hornblower's career (there was no Court Martial in Jamaica, only an inquiry, with the blame for Sawyer's death laid on the escaped Spanish prisoners, and no charge of anyone pushing him into the ship's hold).Parkinson himself is an exceptionally good author of novels covering the Royal Navy of that time period. I am pleased to see that those novels are now being reprinted.

"Must" reading for Hornblower fans

Of all the fictional characters in literature, only a handful have been compelling enough to be appropriated directly into stories by writers other than their original creators. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is one such character. C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower is another. This work by C. Northcote Parkinson is just such a continuation story, but with a twist. Instead of an historical novel, Parkinson writes the book as if it were an actual biography complete with illustrated plates, footnote citations to other (probably fictional) sources, and extended quotes from letters supposedly written by the characters. The Hornblower enthusiast will appreciate the few extra episodes wedged into the chronology created by the original author, as well as a detailed account of Hornblower's ancestry, boyhood, and forty years of life after the period of active service originally chronicled by Forester. But the purist might take exception to one or two new characters that Parkinson takes the liberty of introducing. Parkinson is also quite knowledgeable about the period, and does an excellent job of framing a life such as Hornblower's within the society (both civilian and naval) in which the character is supposed to have lived.Although written as a serious biography, the author is clearly a Hornblower fan having a bit of fun as his retirement project. Parkinson is best known as the originator of "Parkinson's Law" (work expands to occupy available time) and the author of a popular series of humorous but pointed commentaries on management practices written in the 1950's and 1960's. In these books, he often feigns being a sociologist discovering universal principles of human behavior. So it is no surprise that he should follow up with this story in which he pretends to be an historian researching an actual person. The same tongue in cheek humor is at work.

Filling in the Blanks

Want to know what really happened to the captain of the "Renown"? Accident or assassination? How about Hornblower's life after the Navy? What happened to his son and Lady Barbara? Forester left many gaps in Hornblower's career to be filled in. Parkinson rises to the occasion presenting a complete fictionalized biography of Forester's great naval hero. Filled with the same wonderfully authentic details that enlivened Forester's stories, this book evokes life at sea in a British man o' war during the incomparable Age of Fighting Sail. A must for any Hornblower fan!