veronicafrance 's review for:

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester

4.0

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I can remember the delicious pleasure of wallowing in Hornblower books on rainy Sunday afternoons when I was a teenager. I'd never been on a sailing ship and had no idea what many of the nautical terms referred to. But Forester had a talent for making this not matter. Either the precise detail was not important, or he provided enough context to enable you to understand what you needed to. And you read these novels not for the technical content (brilliantly researched though it is) but for the swashbuckling adventure, the evocation of daily life in the 18th-century Royal Navy, and above all for the ridiculously lovable figure of Hornblower himself -- shy, gauche, endlessly self-critical, but always finding moral courage and imagination when he needs them. After all these years they are still a cracking read. This one is a "prequel", a series of short episodes from Hornblower's midshipman days conveying what a varied life that of a junior officer could be.