40. Master And Commander: The History Behind the Epic

Are the Master And Commander novels as good as the film? Why was there so much mystery surrounding the life of author Patrick O’Brian? And, why did the series initially struggle to take off? Join Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitha Syrett as they delve into the fascinating story behind the writing of Master And Commander, and the world it was born of. Download the Klarna app to stay on top of your money, so you can think about, well, anything else. Klarna balance account required to receive cashback points. Limitations, terms, and conditions apply. Exclusions apply. Learn more at https://www.klarna.com/uk/buyer-protection-description/. For analysis, book recommendations and more, sign up to our newsletter, Book Club Notes, introduced weekly by Tabby or Dominic. Sign up at: https://www.thebookclubhq.com/ Email us: ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠@bookclubpodhq⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠@thebookclubpodhq⁠⁠ X: ⁠⁠@bookclubpodhq⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠@TheBookClubPodHQ⁠⁠ Senior Producer: Nicole Maslen Assistant Producer: Alfie Norris Social Producer: Harry Balden Video Editor: James Clayden Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  Tabby, with our schedules getting busier and busier, loads of books to read and life admin piling up, I find that my time for daydreaming, which you know is very important to me, has now all but disappeared.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  And yet, so many authors credit their literary genius with letting their minds wander, and our bookshelves would be far emptier without that.

• 0:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  But you know, Tabby, that is why I absolutely love Klarna's free app. It helps me stay on top of my money admin, so I have more time to perfect the art of daydreaming.

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• 0:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  The app even has night and day assistance, so you can feel confident when you shop.

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• 2:42Speaker 02

  Well, gentlemen.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  Jack said, after they had drunk the king's health.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  I have news that will please you, I believe. Though I must ask Mr. Dillon's indulgence for speaking of a service matter at this table. The Admiral gives us a cruise on our own down to Cape Now, and I have prevailed upon Dr. Maturin to stay aboard, to sew us up when the violence of the king's enemies happens to tear us apart.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  Huzzah! Well done! Here, here! Top in use! Good, hear him! They cried, all more or less together, and they looked so pleased. There was so much candid friendliness on their faces that Stephen was intensely moved.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Lord Keith was delighted when I told him.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  Jack went on.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  Said he envied us extremely, had no physician in the flagship, was amazed when I told him of the gunner's brains. Called for his spyglass to look at Mr. Day taking the sun on deck, and wrote out the doctor's order in his own hand, which is something I have never heard of in the service before.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Nor had anyone there present. The order had to be wetted.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Three bottles of port there, Killick.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  Bumpers all round, and while Stephen sat looking modestly down at the table, they all stood up, crouching their heads under the beams and sang, huzzah, huzzah, huzzah, huzzah, huzzah, huzzah, huzzah!

• 4:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  I thought you were going to miss out on huzzah there, Tabby. That would have been disastrous.

• 4:05Speaker 00

  I wouldn't, I wouldn't dream of that kind of insubordination. Yeah. So, hello, everyone. Welcome aboard, everybody, to His Majesty's Book Club. You find us here on the high seas at the dawn of the 19th century with Patrick O'Brien's very well-known novel, Master and Commander. And this is the first book in his great series about the seafaring adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin. Captain Jack there, played by Russell Crowe.

• 4:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Beautifully, I thought.

• 4:39Dominic Sandbrook?

  Who was playing everybody else?

• 4:41Speaker 00

  What, the 30-man crew? That was all me.

• 4:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  That was all you. Unbelievable.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Stephen and Jack are shipmates during the Napoleonic Wars, and the book was published in 1969. It didn't make much of an impression at first, but then, O'Brien went on to write another 19 books in this series, and he carries the story through from 1800 to just after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. By the final books, which were written in the 1990s, the series had taken off. It was an international hit, and in 2003, three of them were adapted very loosely into a wonderful film starring Russell Crowe, who, Dominic, you were voicing there, and Paul Bettany. I absolutely love the film. It's one of my top 10 films of all time.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  And so, to me, it came as no surprise that it was nominated for 10 Oscars, but, and this is the ultimate Sophie's Choice, for me, anyway, it lost them all to The Return of the King. So that, I mean, that, I wish Oscars were still like that. That's the ultimate win-win for me, really.

• 5:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, they're actually good films. So, yeah, I think everybody loves the film of Master and Commander. Although I have to say, Tabby, as good as the film is, the film does not remotely compare with the books. So everybody who's read the book says, the film is great, but it's not the books. And the Aubrey and Maturin that we meet in the cinema are very different from the Aubrey and Maturin on the page. On the page, they're one of the great double acts in fiction. These books, I mean, people love them. So The New York Times in 1991 said they were the best historical novels ever written. Loads of critics have agreed with that. A writer in The Washington Post said, you should think of the series. So Lea, our producer, was like, why are there so many books in the series? Here's why. This critic said, they are a single, multi-volume novel that far beyond any episodic chronicle

• 6:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  ebbs and flows with the timeless tide of character and the human heart. So that's high praise. And they've been compared with the naval writer C.S. Forrester, but also with Joseph Conrad. And above all, the most common comparison is with Patrick O'Brien's hero, and actually one of your heroes, literary heroes, Tabby, which is Jane Austen.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, given all this, there's loads to talk about here. The characters, the style, which is unique, and of course, the really fascinating, exciting real history behind it. I actually fell down a massive rabbit hole with the guy that actually inspired Jack Aubrey, and we'll get on to him in a bit. And he is undoubtedly one of the most heroic characters in the history of the Royal Navy. And then there's also Patrick O'Brien himself, and I know, Dominic, you fell down a massive rabbit hole with him. Because he's a man whose identity is actually, in many ways, a fabrication and a work of fiction in itself.

• 7:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. So interesting.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  But let's go back to the beginning, and let's start by reminding people what the book is actually about.

• 7:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  Just to give people an overview, it starts in April 1800. Britain is in the Napoleonic Wars, although at this point Napoleon is not yet Emperor of France. When Britain fought these wars, Britain's war effort was devoted to the seas rather than to land, so it's spearheaded by the massive bureaucracy and manpower and technological modernity and military might of the Royal Navy. And at the time, the Royal Navy was the world's most advanced organisation of any kind.

• 7:56Speaker 00

  Oh, patriotic chills.

• 7:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  So when you're, you know, reading about this in the, in the book, to people at the time, this seemed, you know, jaw-dropping. It was the NASA or the sort of, you know, the AI developer of its day or whatever. And that sounds like a silly comparison, but really, it's pioneering loads of things that then filter into the rest of daily lives.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, it takes a lot of care over its sailors, doesn't it?

• 8:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  It does. Yeah, they're, yeah, right. I mean, there's this amazing fact that basically the healthiest people in the world, probably, are the people on Royal Navy ships, because they're being given fruit and vegetables and all this stuff. Anyway.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Extraordinary.

• 8:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  The book opens on the Spanish island of Menorca, so that's a British base in the Mediterranean. And our hero is Jack Aubrey, who is this big bloke, he's fair-haired, he's brave, he's honest, he's incredibly patriotic, he's very decent, he's a brilliant sailor, he's a natural leader of men. So he's actually very like me.

• 8:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  Did you not see that coming, Tabby?

• 8:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, he likes a hearty meal as well.

• 8:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  He does, he likes pudding.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's, he's, he, like you, is, is a very, is a John Bull character.

• 9:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Thank you. And he becomes great pals with this doctor called Stephen Maturin, who is half Irish, half Catalan. And Maturin comes aboard his ship, the Sophie, as the surgeon. And Stephen is completely different. So he is small and slight, he has dark hair, he's untidy, he's a bit shambolic, but he's a brilliant man. He's got a sardonic sense of humour. And he's fascinated by what he, people call at the time, natural philosophy. So basically, that's all forms of kind of science and nature and ideas and whatnot.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Darwin and all that.

• 9:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, he's sort of anticipating Darwin, I guess. He's like Sir Joseph Banks or these other 18th century characters. He loves logging birds and animals and all this. And politically, Jack is, you know, king and country, Tory England, roast beef. Stephen is, we used to be very radical politically. He originally supported the French Revolution and he was part of the Rebellion of the United Irishmen in 1798, which we'll touch on later. But they become great pals. They sail around, in every book, they are basically, or most books, they're sailing around the Mediterranean or, or other oceans with their crew and they fight and capture enemy ships, or they are trying to escape enemy ships. And they have all of these kinds of adventures and they become greater and greater friends as the series progresses.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I definitely found this to be the case in reading this book for the first time. The story isn't really the point. Their friendship is much more the point. And also the world of this ship, the Sophie, is actually sort of a character in, in her, in herself. This is not a book full of female characters, but you know, she sort of compensates a little bit. And the navy is a huge part of it, the life in the navy. So the traditions, the language, the rituals, the totally impenetrable jargon about sails. Another really important part of it, that kind of, is like this tension pulling you through, is the very careful balance that Jack must tread throughout the book

• 10:54Speaker 00

  as the master and commander between friendship and discipline, levity and dominance with his crew, keeping the equilibrium in the mood of the ship, you know, is so crucial. And you can feel it, like the movement of the sea or something, start to fluctuate as, as the book goes on.

• 11:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  Absolutely.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and also it means that the relationships in the novel are kind of under a magnifying glass, because in a small claustrophobic environment like that, friendships grow very quickly, hence Maturin and Aubrey. But also enmity, poison erupts very quickly as well.

• 11:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, completely.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  And the other point is the writing itself. It's this remarkable style, modelled on the writers of the time, like, as you say, Jane Austen. And it makes you feel as though you've been immersed in the world of the 1800s, even if you don't often really know what's going on.

• 11:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  So a really wonderful part of it, I thought, was the conversation. The characters have these extremely authentic conversations, you know, and, and the language that is used, tubular or whatever, is truly that of the period. And I was very impressed by that. And we'll come back to discuss Jack and Stephen and the way that the book evokes this period more in a bit, and the colourful life of the guy that inspired Jack Aubrey, Thomas Cochrane. But before we do that, let's talk a little bit about what, you know, your history with the book.

• 12:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  So, yeah, I started reading these about 15 years ago, maybe, maybe longer. I have to admit, when I first read Master and Commander, I was really underwhelmed.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  Really? I did not know that.

• 12:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, massively underwhelmed. So I could see that there was something in them, but I just thought, why is there not more action? And the main thing I thought was, I have no idea what's happening. I have literally no idea what's going on.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  Oh, sad.

• 12:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  And about halfway through, I realised, I'm never going to know what all these ropes are, all these sails. And I remember reading an article about it where somebody just said, you know, it's brilliant, but you've just got to let all that wash over you. No one knows what that means. And once I'd kind of figured that out, and I started to get to know the characters, and then that's the key thing, getting to know the characters, then I really did fall in love with it. And, and basically for the last, there's 20 books in the series, and I, I generally read one a year. I'd sort of rationed them and I would read them on my summer holiday.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  I love that.

• 13:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  I would read one a year, I'd get back into that world. I can well imagine you curling your lip at this, Tabby. It's like being reintroduced to old friends again.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  No, I, I don't curl my lip at that at all. That's how I see books that I love.

• 13:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, that's good. What about you?

• 13:13Speaker 00

  I'd never read it before. My dad was devoted to these books. So I was, I've, I've grown up with like, the covers around me all the time. So I was obviously aware of the series and I was aware that I had this adoring following, apostles almost. So I'm always intrigued by a book that inspires that kind of.

• 13:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  Adulation, yeah.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, adulation, exactly. And I'd seen the film and I loved the film. So I was excited to start this. I was so confused initially because I was expecting the film. I hadn't realised that the film was made up of three books. Again, as you say, I was overwhelmed and mystified by all the rope. And then, as you say, you know, the world starts to slightly seep into you. It's somehow very comforting, the sounds and the smells of the sloop, that enclosed little arena. I liked the two protagonists. I liked their friendship a lot. I liked that there was nothing cliched or predictable really in this book. I liked the impeccable dialogue. Yeah, it is a fecking diagram of a ship at times.

• 14:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  And I, I found the shifts between scenes really confusing. Like, one minute, we're on Mallorca in a drawing room at a concert or something, and then the next, we're like, it's like naval warfare. And, and there's nothing to tell you really that the, the scene has shifted. So I struggled with that, but I did really like the world.

• 14:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  We should get into the life of Patrick O'Brien a little bit, because this is an amazing story, isn't it? It's basically a detective story in and of itself. So where should we start, Tabby?

• 14:40Speaker 00

  So let's start with the moment that the world really discovered the Aubrey-Maturin stories. So it was 1989 and an American editor called Starling Lawrence, who worked for WW Norton, was in London on business. And he's meeting British publishers and agents. And one of the agents presented him with Patrick O'Brien, whom Lawrence had never read. And then the agent gave Lawrence a copy of one of O'Brien's recent books, The Reverse of the Medal. It doesn't seem a particularly exciting proposition. It's a novel about the Royal Navy and the Napoleonic Wars. I mean.

• 15:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  And worse, it is book 11 in a series that was already tried in America by two different publishers and never caught on. So on the flight home, it's one of these wonderful twists and turns in publishing that changes the fate of, of, of an author and his books. On the flight home, Lawrence digs out the paperback and he starts reading and he's hooked. I was surprised by that because I, I don't feel like this is the kind of book that maybe you get hooked on to your first time reading it, but nevertheless, I'm glad that he did. So he gets back to New York, he tells Norton he wants to buy the whole series. Incredible, every author's dream. So then in autumn 1990, Norton begins to publish them as new paperback editions. And to everyone's surprise, they sell really well.

• 16:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, it's a lovely story, isn't it?

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I think that's so great. And I do think these are books deserving of that because for so many people, they might seem a bit highbrow or a bit impenetrable, but it's so great that they got given the chance.

• 16:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  Completely.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  To be let out.

• 16:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, they'd sort of fallen between two stools. So they, people were like, are they genre fiction or are they literary fiction? I'm not really sure what they are, because they're not giving you all the action you would crave of genre fiction. But equally, literary fiction tends to be about people in Hampstead, you know, having affairs with each other. It doesn't tend to be about, you know, people at sea in 1800. Anyway, Norton published the books a couple of months later, January 1991. The New York Times book section ran this big essay by the bloke called Richard Snow, who edited a magazine called American Heritage, which was the big mainstream history magazine in America. If you were a history buff, you would get this magazine. And Richard Snow wrote this article and he said, no one's heard of these books, but these books are incredible. And he said, if you make it through this series, you will have read

• 17:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  what I continue to believe are the best historical novels ever written. And along the way, you'll not only have witnessed the unfolding of a tremendous story, but the very beginning of the world that we inhabit. And of course, all these people read this, they're like, oh my god. And they, they go and read the books. And after a couple of years, they've sold half a million copies. There are like US senators and Supreme Court justices who, who are desperate to meet Patrick O'Brien. They're like, I love the books, I'm addicted to the books. And I think that's definitely true, that there is a conservative audience for these books. So particularly among men, I mean, these are books that appeal to particular kinds of men. People who say, I want a patriotic, red-blooded narrative, and especially a narrative, people are so thrilled that it's a

• 17:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  series of books with at its core, the friendship between two, sort of, between two blokes, because that's quite a rare thing, I think, in, in modern fiction. So they're incredibly successful and amazing. And of course, at this point, everybody starts to say, well, where have they come from? Who is this Patrick O'Brien? Because when you look at the books, the author biography tells you almost nothing about him at all. Patrick O'Brien, at this point, had given virtually no interviews. And when people do meet him, they say he's very polite, he's very reserved. He basically gives nothing away. He's a total mystery.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  But then, at last, the mystery is seemingly solved because in 1993, another New York Times writer, Mark Horowitz, persuaded O'Brien to let him come to his house, his home in French Catalonia, on the border with Spain, the town of Collier. And Horowitz then publishes the story in May. He is a compact, austere gentleman. His pale, watchful eyes are clear and alert, like those of a young and vigorous bird of prey. More than one visitor, upon meeting him for the first time, has felt a frisson of recognition. Surely here is Dr. Maturin himself, alive and well. How exciting, you know? If you look for the books that you love in their authors, this is

• 18:57Speaker 00

  the dream. So, because who is he? Well, according to Horowitz, he's an Irish novelist, born in 1914 into an Irish family of some distinction. There seemed to have been French lessons, books, horses, travel, fox hunting, and a governess, this very romantic upbringing. His mother then died when he was a child. And then he had this lung illness that troubled him into adulthood. And that's what kept him at home for much of his early life, rather than going to boarding school and he was privately tutored. And crucially, he had been a sailor most of his life because he was recommended sea air as a cure for his illness when he was unwell.

• 19:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  He was educated at the Sorbonne and studied natural sciences and the classics. So even though he sounds English, this is a quote, O'Brien feels that he was formed, as Stephen Maturin was, by Ireland and France.

• 19:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. And if you're a Patrick O'Brien fan, you're like, brilliant. This is, this is exactly what I wanted to hear. Because Ireland, the gentry, fox hunting, a governess, sailing, the Sorbonne, natural sciences, this is, this is, oh, Patrick O'Brien, bingo. The one problem with this, right, is every word of it pretty much is untrue. It's a fantasy. So Patrick O'Brien has constructed, well, he's constructed two extraordinary fictions. One of them is the Aubrey Maturin series and the other is his own life.

• 20:18Speaker 00

  So odd.

• 20:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  I know, it's an incredible thing. I mean, we all make fictions of our own lives, I suppose. But the more successful his books become, the more this fantasy begins to fall apart. So it begins with an exposé in the Daily Telegraph in 1998. And the Daily Telegraph, which of course, you know, is read by people who love his books, says, bad news, guys. His name isn't Patrick O'Brien and he's not even Irish. So it gets kind of worse and worse. There's more sort of stuff that comes out. So this is an incredible thing. Obviously sailing in the sea and all of the details of the jargon and stuff is central. That this is central to Patrick O'Brien's books. And O'Brien himself explained to people, he said, well, I had a friend who owned an ocean going yacht, a converted, square rigged merchantman. And he used to crew it with undergraduates and fair sized boys and together with some real seamen.

• 21:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  And we would sail off into the Atlantic and I would go with them. And after a while, I could hand reef and steer without disgrace, which allowed more ambitious sailing later on. Anyway, in 1995, an American venture capitalist called Tom Perkins invited Patrick O'Brien on a two week cruise in the Mediterranean. And Tom Perkins's suspicions were aroused when he said, we've got two weeks, Patrick, where would you like to go? And O'Brien said, well, we should set off from France, go all the way around Sicily. I think we should pop in in Greece, then I think we should go all the way down to Beirut. And then I think we should come back and we should do a tour around the Ballyarrigarians, like Mallorca, Menorca, whatever.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Such an error from Patrick O'Brien here. Like clearly, I don't know, his, his eyes were, were bigger than his belly or something. Because if you know you can't do this, no matter how tempting the opposite, the proposition is, don't go. That's like agreeing to cook a Michelin dinner when you've never cooked a meal in your life.

• 22:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. So Tom Perkins was like, hold on, we've got, we've got two weeks. I mean, we might, we probably can't even get to the first place on the list.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  Let's break records.

• 22:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  And he was baffled. And in his description, he said, you know, how could this old sea dog make such an elementary mistake? Well, he then found out when they actually went to sea and Patrick O'Brien would take his, you know, probably sweating profusely. Was asked to take the wheel or whatever. And the boat was like lurching madly from side to side. And this venture capitalist basically had to sort of take back the wheel or whatever. And he said in his, in his reports on this, he just says very laconically, I began to suspect that his autobiographical references to his months at sea as a youth were fanciful.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  I find this all so odd though, because, okay, so first we take that incident, the sailing. O'Brien's fake identity is modeled on Maturin, so who's not a seaman himself. So it's just don't pretend to be a sailor, but also then winding it all the way back is such a shame. Cause he's clearly brilliantly clever and well read and has done remarkable quantities of research. And has a fantastic imagination. So why does he need to create the fiction? It's, it's, it's a remarkable feat that all authors achieve, that they're able to create something from nothing. Yeah, you draw in parts of your life, but you don't need to live what you write. So why did he do it in the first place?

• 23:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, the amazing thing is he created the fiction of his own life well before he started writing these books.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, true. Exactly. Well, so what is actually going on? Who, who really was he? So after O'Brien's death in January 2000, some of the truth did come out. Thanks to two biographies, one by the American writer Dean King, who's a big fan of the books. And also then his stepson, Count Nikolai Tolstoy, who is from a Russian noble family and a distant cousin.

• 23:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  Of the Tolstoy.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Leo Tolstoy. Yeah, exactly. Nevertheless, things still look a bit ambiguous. Cause Tolstoy said that even such seemingly simple facts as his change of name and invention of a wholly imaginary past are still mysterious.

• 24:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  His name isn't Patrick O'Brien. Well, his original name, he was born Richard Patrick Russ, wasn't he?

• 24:07Speaker 00

  Kind of American name.

• 24:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, it's German. Actually, this is so interesting. In Buckinghamshire in 1914. So his grandfather was German. His grandfather made all the money. He sold furs to posh people on Bond Street. I could see you wearing one of his furs, tabby, let's be frank.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  I'd never wear real furs, but yeah, I would literally lather and slather myself in fake fur.

• 24:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  Okay. One of your elaborate coats that you love to wear.

• 24:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  Anyway, his father is a doctor. He's called Charles and he's not a very good doctor. So his father is always trying to devise new cures for gonorrhea, which is a funny interest. So a bit like Steve O'Maturin, who's always experimenting with new cures. And O'Brien's father, or Patrick's father, he's really interested in these mad inventions. So for example, he tried to interest the post office in a new phone box that would lock you in if you called the emergency services. And this, this was to deter people making hoax phone calls. Weirdly, they didn't go for it. So Patrick was number eight of nine children. And when he was four, his mother died. And most of the other children were packed off to relatives, but Patrick stayed at home with his father, Charles the doctor.

• 25:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Patrick spent a lot of time at home on his own. For whatever reason, he wasn't sent to school. But then when he was 10, his father married again, a sort of rich heiress, who was very nice to him. Actually, she wasn't the sort of wicked stepmother at all. And she sent him to a couple of grammar schools in London and in Kent.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  Probably all of his stuff about, you know, Irish gentry and hunting and governesses maybe comes from her.

• 25:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, possibly. Yes, quite possibly. Or, and indeed, his second wife was quite posh, wasn't she? So he might've got it from her as well. And actually Tolstoy, his stepson, said he was a massive snob with an obsessive desire to establish his own gentility. So basically he invented this fantasy childhood.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  It's like wish fulfillment, right?

• 25:52Dominic Sandbrook?

  Completely wish fulfillment. And people would say to him, he's the kind of person whose books appeal basically to public school boys.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  And so public school boys are talking to each other, oh, I went to such and such school, whatever. Where did you go, Patrick? And Patrick has to say, well, I was very sickly, so I had private tutor.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  Rather than tell the truth, which is, I went to an ordinary grammar school, which is more impressive, right? Because he would be meritocratic, but he was a snob. So he wants to pretend to be something he's not.

• 26:18Speaker 00

  I wonder if also because, you know, being one of nine and losing your mother at a young age, maybe, you know, there's, there's an element of wanting to stand out, being an attention seeker. But it's interesting because the characters in his book don't strike me as snobby at all. It doesn't really come in. Anyway, he later claimed that he was a great reader as a boy. And says that when he was ill or lonely, he read volume after volume of the 18th century gentleman's magazine. I mean, if so, that's fantastic research already.

• 26:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  And that may well have been true. He certainly was a very keen and very precocious writer from a young age. So in 1927, when he was 12, he wrote the novel Caesar, The Life Story of a Panda Leopard, which was published three years later.

• 26:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  Do you know, look that up. It's such a sweet story. The creature is, it's half panda, half leopard.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Oh, lovely. How charming. Yeah.

• 27:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  Lovely.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  And then meanwhile, he's sending stories to scouts' annuals or boys' annuals. And he has another volume of illustrated animal stories called Beasts Royal, published in 1934. So he loves animals and that always gives him a tick in my book.

• 27:22Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. And don't forget, he's a teenager at this point. I mean, this is pretty impressive.

• 27:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. But now he's an adult, so he needs a job.

• 27:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Speaker 00

  And in 1927, he applies to the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, but he's turned down on health grounds. So then he joins RAF to become a pilot, but he only lasts a month. So two failures there. It's very unclear what happened next, but he marries Elizabeth Jones, who's a seamstress from Wales in 1936. And they have two children, Rich and Jane. But Jane has spina bifida and Patrick is clearly a terrible father. So Tolstoy said that he had a constitutional inability to be a good father and had an acute revulsion towards small children, including his son.

• 28:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  He's also having affairs and continuing to make stuff up. So it goes way back. And then years later, one of his lovers told Dean King, he'd made up a story that he was an RAF pilot who's had a steel plate put in his head after being hit by a propeller. I mean, it's so strange from the man that wrote these very realist historical novels. It's so interesting.

• 28:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  Although as we'll see, identity and making stuff up about your identity becomes an important thing in the books.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  Very true. Then comes the war.

• 28:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. Well, again, and he made up a fantasy about his time in the war. He said he had, quote, joined one of those intelligence organisations that flourished during the war. Our work had to do with France and more than that, I will not say.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  It's like a line from Ian Fleming.

• 28:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  It is. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But actually he spent much of the war driving as a volunteer ambulance driver. And by this point, he had a new girlfriend called Mary Tolstoy, hence his stepson Nikolai. And Mary Tolstoy, I mean, she wasn't originally Tolstoy. She was from a posh sort of landed gentry family in Devon, very red trouser. And she had married Count Dimitri Tolstoy when she was 20 and they then fell out. And she used to drive ambulances with her dachshund, who was called Miss Potts on her lap while she was driving the ambulances. She was a character. And basically Mary wangled them both jobs at the end of the war with a thing called the political warfare executive, which sounds great. But it's basically quite a dull propaganda organisation. They just spent their time writing reports. They weren't really spies. But interestingly though, by this point, don't forget, he's still Richard Patrick Russ.

• 29:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  But because Russ is a German name, he has changed it already to Ross. And he has also made up a story that he has a PhD from the University of Padua, which is just a massive fantasy. Anyway, he left his original family, his wife, he had a very acrimonious divorce and he marries Mary Tolstoy. And who's got divorced herself in the summer of 1945. And this is the point where he changes his name to Patrick O'Brien. And the strange thing is, no one really knows why. So some people have said, well, maybe it was a rejection of his father, this failed doctor. You know, he wants to put all that behind him. And but why O'Brien? Why an Irish name? No one knows. Tolstoy says he might've got it, and this particular spelling of O'Brien, by the way, which is not the usual one.

• 30:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  Tolstoy says he might've got it from some 19th century insurance document that he'd been reading, which seems extraordinary. But the maddest thing of all is that Tolstoy also said that by the time he met O'Brien, which was years later. O'Brien clearly had come to believe that he was Irish. And also Mary, his wife, kind of believed it too, because he quotes her sending him a postcard from Ireland and saying, here I am in your ancestral home. It's brilliant. You know, I love it or whatever. Must mean so much to you.

• 30:44Speaker 00

  Very odd. Maybe he was just very convincing.

• 30:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  She must have known. When she would met him, he wasn't called Patrick O'Brien. Anyway, who knows?

• 30:52Speaker 00

  No, it's, it's very odd. Well, the couple moved to a cottage in a remote village in North Wales. And they're very, very poor. And then of course they moved to French Catalonia. So Patrick O'Brien is clearly pretty hard work. So Tolstoy portrays him as prickly, snobbish, a control freak. He doesn't like children, as we've seen. He doesn't take criticism well. And he's a big know it all. You can see this in the books. And he's writing all the time, novels, biographies, anthologies. But his biggest money spinner are translations from French to English. And these are what pay their bills. But in the long run, of course, the most important books he writes are a couple of naval adventures for older children slash teenagers. And these are published in the late 1950s.

• 31:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, and this is such a funny thing because this is basically an investment that doesn't seem to pay off at the time, but it does later on. So basically, at the time, the big naval stories of the day, let's say 1950s, are the Hornblower stories by C S Forrester. And people loved these things. And there was an American film with Greg, Hollywood movie with Gregory Peck in the 50s, a Hornblower film. You know, Hornblower was big and C S Forrester ruled the roost. So no one even noticed Patrick O'Brien's little stories for kids. However, in 1966, Forrester died and there was a gap in the market because there clearly was an audience of people who liked naval stories and the Napoleonic Wars. So there's an editor in America called Robert Hill, who works for the publisher JB Lippincott. And Robert Hill thinks, I want someone to carry on and do more of these Napoleonic War

• 32:23Dominic Sandbrook?

  stories, maybe invent some new characters. And completely randomly, he has seen these kid's books and he says, well, maybe the bloke who did these kids books could do it. And so he gets in touch with Patrick O'Brien's agent and he signs him up for what the contract says will be an untitled novel about an 18th century naval adventure. And at that point, you know, these books could have gone in any way. And this is where the genius of Patrick O'Brien comes in. Because he throws himself into it in a way, in just this remarkable manner.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, in terms of his method, I have nothing but praise because an enormous amount of research goes into this first book. And I'd say that this is like, as historical novels go, writing about this particular subject matter, the world of the navy at this time, you would need a lot of research, wouldn't you? I mean, you must know this from your episodes on the rest of history. So a lot of work goes into the first book and that, of course, the whole series. And as I say, this is stuff you just can't make up. And O'Brien clearly really likes doing the research. That's why I keep thinking, why make it up? You love the research, you're really good at it, lean into it. And he later told the New York Times that a novelist must know everything about his time and he does. So, and I'm sure this is true, by his own account, he goes to the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and the British Public Record Office.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  And he paws over logbooks of captains and officers and he studies the plans of the ships. He reads the memoirs and the letters of all the great admirals, Collingwood, Howe, Hood, Nelson. He eats up the Naval Chronicle, which is a journal published every month during the Napoleonic Wars and it has all the details of the battles, lots of information about the day to day lives of sailors, about scientific discoveries. You know, it's every aspect of the world of the Royal Navy. Have you read this?

• 34:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  No.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Surely, not even for Nelson Hero of the Seas?

• 34:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  I was been waiting, like, how long been waiting? About half an hour for a mention of Nelson Hero of the Seas. Yeah, I did do a lot of research, but nowhere near as much as research as Patrick O'Brien. I mean, he, you know, I was reading a few history books, he's gone absolutely to the source, hasn't he?

• 34:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, so on his desk at home, he has a universal dictionary of the marine from 1769 and a histoire général de voyage. And that's from 1746. He also has an Encyclopedia Britannica from 1810 and early editions of books by 18th century writers like Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and above all, Jane Austen. And in that New York Times interview, he says, you need to see the print they saw, have the smell of the binding in your nostrils. Basically, you have to live in the 1800s to write it down on the page. And I so admire that. I think if I were to ever attempt to write like a big historical novel, this is how you'd do it. It's so impressive.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  So then finally, in 1968 or so, he finishes and the result is of course Master and Commander. The publishers love it. Another Lippincott editor says, O'Brien wasn't writing about the early 19th century. He seems to be writing from within it. And then it's published in 1969 in America and then in Britain by Collins a year later. The reviews are quite nice, but the sales aren't great. It's kind of middling, people don't take much notice. And then after a couple more books in the series, sadly, Lippincott give them up. And another US publisher has a go, but they don't sell any books either. So by book six, we're in about 1980 at this point, they are only being published in Britain. They still get decent reviews, but still, most people haven't really heard of them. And at best, they have a cult following.

• 35:45Speaker 00

  So they're not a mass market for nothing. They're not Hornblower.

• 35:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, not at all, not at this point. But then that incredible stroke of luck that you talked about, so Starling Lawrence reading number 11, The Reverse of the Medal on the fly home. And that takes us to this great boom of the 1990s, which is brilliant for his sales, of course, but bad for his privacy. Because he's now being paid a lot of money, almost a million dollars a book. He gets all kinds of amazing invitations. So he's invited to number 10 Downing Street by John Major. He gets a CBE from the Queen. There's a banquet in his honour at the Royal Rainbow Hospital in Greenwich with a band from the Royal Marines. You know, people are all over him. The downside, of course, is that people are now kind of asking who he is. And they start to look into his life story. You know, imagine this sense of the walls closing in or something.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  Oh my God, every lie is like worst nightmare, isn't it?

• 36:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right, because of course, he's now, he's used to telling Tolstoy's stories about his background and almost making his background a kind of wishful film of fantasy. And he kind of now can't stop. And some of the people who've written about him say, you know, he's not a con man. He's not trying to con anybody and get kind of money out of them or to do this for advantage. It is more that he's created a fantasy world for himself and he can't get out of it. So actually, there's something a little bit sad about the end of his story. His wife died in the late 90s. By this point, he was almost a bit suspicious of anybody who came to talk to him and sort of a little bit paranoid, actually Tolstoy says. He ended up getting, being given rooms at Trinity College Dublin. I mean, that Irish thing again.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  So fantasy endures.

• 37:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  But they themselves wanted to believe in it, right? They were like, oh, let's have this great Irish writer come home.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  And he finished his last book, Blue at the Mison, that came out in 1999.

• 37:29Speaker 00

  Wasn't there an unfinished book?

• 37:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  There is, The Last Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey. So basically, he was, he wasn't even halfway through, I think. But they published his notes and all of that sort of thing. Because it was almost like a series that could never stop.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think. Anyway, he died in January 2000. But tabby, his legacy endures in these books, I guess, which are much more important than his life.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I mean, a writer's work is always more important than their biography, I think. So come aboard after the break and we will get right into Master and Commander. We'll talk about the characters of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. We'll talk about the ships, the battles, the impenetrable jargon. And we'll also explore the remarkable story of the real life inspiration for Jack Aubrey, one of the most dashing but controversial officers in Nelson's navy.

• 38:24Speaker 04

  There we are getting a statement from Nelson the 10th on that flight with 350 passengers on board.

• 38:33Speaker 05

  The Great Game, Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 38:41Speaker 06

  We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 38:49Speaker 07

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 38:52Speaker 05

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 39:07Speaker 05

  All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order or frago.

• 39:16Speaker 03

  A frago that says to kill the president of Russia.

• 39:21Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  New from Goldhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off? You're my soldier, are you?

• 39:29Speaker 07

  Sergeant Tom Macduff, Duffy.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  An audio drama journey like no other.

• 39:34Speaker 07

  Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller. Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Duffy. Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Welcome back to the book club. So before we get back in midshipmen, Sam Brook and I, we have our own crew of battle scarred scurvy ridden sea dogs. And these are the people that read our weekly naval dispatches book club notes. It's free. It comes into your inbox every Saturday and you can sign up rather than being press ganged. You can sign up at the book club HQ.com. So the novel opens, as we said, in April 1800. We're at the British governor's house in Port Mahon, Manorca, and a young Royal Navy lieutenant is listening to a concert, Locatelli's String Quartet in C major. So I quote, "A man of between 20

• 40:49Speaker 00

  and 30, whose big form overflowed his seat, he was wearing his best uniform, the white lapelled, blue coat, white waistcoat, breeches and stockings of lieutenant in the Royal Navy, with the silver medal of the Nile in his buttonhole, and the deep white cuff of his gold button sleeve beat the time, while his bright blue eyes, staring from what would have been a pink and white face if it had not been so deeply turned, gazed fixedly at the bow of the first violin." You learn so much about Jack Aubrey from that one little paragraph. So this is of course, Jack, he's our hero. And he's having great fun beating the time with the music. I love this opening, I have to say, until his neighbour, a small dark haired man says to him very coldly, "If you really must beat the measure, sir,

• 41:33Speaker 00

  let me entreat you to do so in time and not half a beat ahead."

• 41:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  So the good news for everybody is that Tabby has spared us that Irish accent, which she was tempted to do there.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  I don't want to do that to Irish listeners.

• 41:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  No. So Jack is outraged by this because he looks at this other bloke, a small, dark, white faced creature in a rusty black coat, a civilian. And, you know, who is this guy to tell him what to do? But Jack cannot stop. You know, we get a sense just in this little anecdote, that's why it's so cleverly chosen, of his irrepressible spirits. He's a man of emotion. He's earnest, he's sincere, and he just can't stop beating the time to the music.

• 42:11Speaker 00

  Great appetites.

• 42:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  And yeah, great appetites. And the other bloke elbows him in the ribs to stop him. And Jack is furious. So basically, as O'Brien says, neither his personal temper nor his professional code could patiently suffer such an affront. So when the music is over, the two men get up. They were sitting next to each other in this sort of absolutely frosty atmosphere. And they stare at each other with open hatred. And it's pretty clear that they're going to have a duel. So Jack says to the other man, "My name is Aubrey, sir. I'm staying at the Crown." And Maturin says, "Mine, sir, is Maturin, and we found any morning at Jozelito's Coffee House. May I beg you to stand aside?" So these are our two main characters. These are our Holmes and Watson, the people who are going to become

• 42:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  such great mates. And, you know, as we said, just in these little incidents, O'Brien gives you almost everything you need to know about their basic temperament. Because Jack goes back to his lodgings. He's very frustrated. He's very miserable. He's in debt. He's on half pay. He's waiting to be given command of a ship. But when he gets back, he gets brilliant news. Quite unexpectedly, he's been given command of a sloop, which is a little ship, also described sometimes as a brig. And knowing the difference between a sloop and a brig, something Stephen doesn't know, and most of us would find baffling, but it's terribly important to Jack. Anyway, he's commanding the ship, which is called HMS Sophie. So he is now a master and commander. And that means that as long as he's on the ship, he's ranked as a captain. And Jack is so thrilled that the next day, he's going

• 43:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  around to get everything ready for his ship. He bumps into this little bloke again outside the coffee shop. And he's completely forgotten. All the bad blood is forgotten. And he gives him a lovely apology, which is Jack's kind of decency. "Mr. Maturin, why, there you are, sir. I owe you a thousand apologies. I'm afraid I must have been a sad bore to you last night, and I hope you'll forgive me. We sailors here such little music. We're so little used to genteel company that we go carried away. I beg your pardon. I forgot to do Russell Crowe's voice, so everyone will forgive me."

• 44:09Speaker 00

  But that's so like Jack as well. He has these kind of earth shaking moods and temperaments. And he's, you know, like flings them upon those around him for better or for worse. But it makes him oddly likeable.

• 44:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Completely. He's a man of great gusto and love of life. He's angry. When he's angry, he's angry, but then it's forgotten. But he has this kind of generosity of spirit. He's not afraid to apologize.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  But then the other man. So we discover the other man is Stephen Maturin. And he is also a good sort, as it turns out. Because he jumps to his feet and he says, "My dear sir, you have every reason to be carried away. I've never heard a better quartetto in my life. Such unity, such fire. May I propose a cup of chocolate or coffee? It would give me great pleasure." Every major conversation in this novel happens over lashings of food and drink. So that's another wonderful detail. Because they do go on to share a pot of chocolate and cream. They chat about Jack's promotion, their love of music, Stephen's love of birds and nature. They get on famously and they agree to have dinner later. And then Stephen reveals that he's a doctor. He's not a surgeon, though. There's a difference.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  And Sophie is a surgeon down. But alas, he agrees. He's always poor, Stephen. So he agrees to come aboard the Sophie as the ship's surgeon and we are off. But what is the context for all this? What is going on? Dominic, it's time to put on your historian's hat.

• 45:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  I'll put on that hat. What's would that hat be? It would be a naval hat. So as we said, this is set in the wars between Britain and France from 1793 to 1815. So when Britain joined the war, it was basically an attempt to stop the French Revolution, the sort of virus of Jacobinism spreading beyond France's borders. But this evolves into the Napoleonic Wars, once Napoleon takes power in France. And as we said in the first half, for Britain, this is all about the Royal Navy. So for Britain, the Royal Navy and its economy go hand in hand. And Britain, its whole identity is based really on the Industrial Revolution, but also on the navy. So to quote Leddyard's Naval History of Britain, which was published

• 46:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  in 1735, "Our trade is the mother and nurse of our seamen, our seamen the life of our fleet, and our fleet the security and protection of our trade, and both together are the wealth, strength and glory of Great Britain." So when the book kicks off in 1800, the Royal Navy are in the Mediterranean. They're blockading enemy ports and harbors. They're intercepting enemy ships. They're carrying messages. They're supporting kind of local governments that are on Britain's side. The darling of the fleet at the time is of course Horatio Nelson. He has just won the Battle of the Nile against Napoleon in Egypt. We know that Jack was there from the very first paragraph, because Jack was wearing the silver medal of the Nile in his buttonhole.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  I was very excited when I saw that. I like these like real world references. Yeah.

• 47:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, you, I mean, you mentioned to Tabby that, you know, I'm a big Nelson fan, which I am.

• 47:06Speaker 00

  You are one of the biggest.

• 47:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  A big fan of Nelson and honour member of the Nelson Society.

• 47:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. And also you are currently recording in an office that has a...

• 47:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  People might be able to see over my shoulder, there's some book plates that were Nelson's book plates that were given to me by Peregrine Nelson Hood, who is a big listener to the show, who's descended both from the Nelson family and from Admiral Hood, which is incredible.

• 47:27Speaker 00

  That is, that is some excellent naval lineage.

• 47:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  Jack loves Nelson. Jack remembers three things that Nelson said. And he tells the story. The first thing Nelson once said to him, "May I trouble you for the salt, sir?" And in the film, in the film, it's a comedy. Everyone laughs. Russell Crowe says it kind of very seriously. And then he's obviously joking.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  But Jack's not joking in the book. Jack says, "I always have said it's close to his way ever since. You may have noticed it." In other words, Jack loves Nelson so much that he asks for the salt in the same way that Nelson did. Then they were talking about tactics and Nelson said to Jack, "Never mind manoeuvres. Always go at them." Which is exactly what Nelson did. Nelson was, you know, full on attack. And Jack repeats it. He says, "I shall never forget it." And this of course tells us again, it's again, O'Brien's skill as a writer, because this is not just an interesting historical fact about Nelson and the navy. It's a clue to Jack's character. Jack is, you know, goes straight at it. No subtlety, no tact. And then the final thing.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  Now for the moment, there will see Don, your cry bib.

• 48:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  Cry bib. Is that a thing? Is that a thing? He was telling us how someone had offered him a boat cloak on a cold night. And he had said, "No, he was quite warm." His zeal for his king and country kept him warm. "It sounds absurd, as I tell it, does it not? And was it any other man? Any other man, you would cry out, 'Oh, what pitiful stuff!' and dismiss it as mere enthusiasm. But with him, you felt your bosom glow."

• 48:55Speaker 00

  Oh, it is good stuff. It does send a bit of a shiver down your spine.

• 48:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  Surely. Yeah. I mean, maybe it's better when Russell Crowe does it and the rhymes are slightly different from the film.

• 49:03Speaker 00

  No difference.

• 49:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  But there is, I mean, Nelson, there was this story that Nelson had said this. And again, by making Jack believe it and letting Jack tell it in that way, O'Brien is telling us something about Jack, about his, he is, he's not suspicious as a man. He's not a man who's cynical. He is absolutely sincere and open hearted. And he embraces this with open arms.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  He is what he is. I think there's a line in the book at one point, maybe chuckle at the time, I have to say, it said something, it was something like, "He loved a battle. He loved a wench."

• 49:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  Who doesn't?

• 49:35Speaker 00

  That says it all. Now for the best part, I think, of this whole episode. The guy that Jack is based on in real life, the real person behind him, and he is one of Nelson's comrades. He's a remarkable British hero dubbed the Sea Wolf by Napoleon, which is very cool. And this is Thomas Cochrane. So he's Scottish, from an impoverished aristocratic family. And then he joined the Royal Navy in 1793 and then went on to have an astounding career. In just over a year, he captured or drove aground or sank something like 53 enemy ships. Wasn't that a record in the Navy?

• 50:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, crazy. I don't, I can't remember the exact details, but he basically single-handedly defeated this fleet or something.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  But partly because he had this, well, as we will see, this very little ship. Anyway, he, but he was also rude and insubordinate, but a fantastic fighting sailor. He had enormous success in the Napoleonic Wars, but he alienated a lot of his superiors. And at the same time, he was also a radical MP in Parliament. So attacking the political establishment and criticizing corruption in the Navy.

• 50:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 50:40Speaker 00

  And then in 1814, he was accused of being involved in a stock exchange fraud. I think historians now think that he may have been framed. Is that right?

• 50:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes. Yeah, that is right. There's a recent book, I think it's by, is it Peter Moore, something like that? I can't remember the guy's name, but anyway, got brilliant reviews, basically saying Cochrane was framed, partly, I think, because of his radicalism.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and, and because he'd made so many enemies along the way.

• 51:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  So he was kicked out of Parliament, he was sacked from the Navy and even briefly imprisoned. So he ended up going to South America and he commanded the Chilean Navy against the Spanish and then the Brazilian Navy against the Portuguese.

• 51:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  Look at this guy's career. I mean, spanning continents. And then he came back to Britain and was finally pardoned and reinstated in the Royal Navy and ended up as Commander in Chief in the North American and the Caribbean. So Jack isn't exactly Cochrane, it's important to say, but there are a lot of similarities. They're both superb at sea, but a little bit out of their depth on land. They make poor choices on land. Actually, Nelson was out of his depth on land as well. They both make enemies among their superiors. So in this book, Jack's enemy is Captain Hart, the Monarch and Station Commander. He's having an affair with Molly Hart, Captain Hart's wife. Like Cochrane, Jack is given a small brig and Cochrane and Jack are both devoted to these small brigues as their first command.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  So this is the Sophie and Cochrane's was HMS Speedy, which is so cool.

• 52:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  Love that.

• 52:02Speaker 00

  Like Cochrane, he uses, you know, sneaky tricks and ruses to fool the enemy. I was interested by this because it didn't seem very chivalrous, but at the time this was considered totally legitimate, wasn't it? Because he would do stuff like fly other countries' flags, disguise his ships as a helpless merchantman. I think once he disguised his ship, he pretended his ship had plague. So a Spanish ship sailed away. Or he'd send off barrels with lights to fool pursuers at night. Didn't he once strap himself to a barrel of gunpowder?

• 52:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  There was something like that. Yeah, exactly. But the thing about the flags, so what they do is you can fly a fake flag right up to the moment when you attack. When you attack, you run up your colors. And actually, they do that in the film, the first scene in the film, they shout, let fly and up goes the Union. Yeah, it's brilliant.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  Russell Crowe reveals his captain's uniform.

• 52:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  He takes off his Wailers coat and reveals his British uniform.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  Oh, such good stuff. And like Cochrane, Jack also loves to board enemy ships and gets his men to blacken their faces before they attack.

• 53:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  And then finally, like Cochrane, he makes his name with an incredible feat, capturing a much larger Spanish ship. In reality, Cochrane captured the Gamo, which is twice the size of the Speedy. I think something like in the confrontation, he only lost like three men or something and the Gamo lost.

• 53:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  Loads.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. And in the book, Jack captures the Caca Fuego and that's a wonderful scene, I have to say. But all this makes it sound as if the book is a thinly veiled history and it absolutely is not. It is a novel written with great subtlety and care. And although there are some really exciting scenes, like I say, you definitely don't read it for the action. I actually thought, when I came away from reading it, just laying my cards on the table, I was a bit like, I could have done with a bit more blood.

• 53:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  I know that's not the point, but.

• 53:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, actually, I think sometimes the book is at its most, at its best when nothing is happening at all. So here's the, I, I picked out a passage when I was reading it this time, which I just thought was so lovely. So they're just cruising at sea, three quarters of the way through the book, nothing is happening. And, and the narrator describes days and nights of unbelievable purity. Nights when the steady Ionian breeze rounded the square mainsail, not a brace to be touched, watch relieving watch. And Stephen and Jack on deck soaring away, soaring away, that's meaning with their violin and their cello, lost in their music. Until the falling dew untuned their strings and days when the perfection of dawn was so great. The emptiness so entire that men were almost afraid to speak. I love that. I think that's so moving in a weird way.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  Pulls at your heartstrings.

• 54:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  It does pull at your heartstrings a little bit.

• 54:35Speaker 00

  No, it, it is lovely, but I think the thing that surprises most readers is, is actually just how little action there is altogether. There are the long, you know, like that passages of description or stream of consciousness style reflections within characters' heads. I didn't mind that at all. I quite liked it and, and I really loved the conversations. I loved how authentic it is, you know, words like prating, you would never find that in most books today. And this is, this is coming from a period when conversation was considered a genuine art form.

• 55:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  That's so true. Yeah. The way that Stephen speaks in particular is so elaborate.

• 55:09Speaker 00

  I think Jane Austen would recognize the conversations in this because a similar thing occurs in, in her books. And so I really admire that.

• 55:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 00

  But as I said earlier, I, I struggled with the scene shifts. How one minute you're having the stream of consciousness in, say, someone's head, like James Dillon, who we'll meet. And then the next thing you know, it's far the broadside or whatever, or they're at a different port. I lost, I totally lost the thread of the geography. Yeah.

• 55:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  Do you know what? I think that's, some of this is deliberate because I think we're coming to it as readers with 20th century or 21st century expectations of the novel. But as that editor in America said, when he first delivered the manuscript, Patrick O'Brien was trying to do something very different. He was trying to write a book from within the Napoleonic Wars rather than about them. So in his interviews with the New York Times, he said, well, my models are, you know, not C.S. Forrester, they're Dr. Johnson, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and above all, Jane Austen. So I'm trying to, he's trying to write basically an 18th century book.

• 56:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  And there are a couple of parallels with Austen. Here is one of them. The narrator, as you say, can be very frustrating, but we are never in doubt that we're in the hands of a very particular narrator. Who is kind of of this world. It's not like so many historical books that you read. Okay, Bernard Cornwell.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  To know.

• 56:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  I, I quite like Bernard Cornwell's books, but there's no doubt whatsoever that when you read like Utrid's Son of Utrid or Sharp or whatever. That Bernard Cornwell is a 20th century writer, deep down. He's constructed that novel to appeal to 20th century readers.

• 56:39Speaker 00

  I would say most historical novels, what they're doing is, is they're creating a historical landscape. They're populating it with 21st century characters, with the, the passions, the drives, the emotional triggers of 21st century people and the language. Even Hilary Mantel, who I think is one of the great historical novelists, her language is recognizably our language. But you're right, this is totally different because even the emotional concerns, preoccupations of this book are not those of the 21st century.

• 57:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  Agreed completely. And I think the narrator feels like, it feels like we're being told the story by a narrator who lives in the 1800s. And they, a narrator who is quite knowing, is quite dryly ironic, who is amused by what he's telling us. But it's very much of that world and not, and not ours.

• 57:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. So when you first read the book, the narrative style definitely isn't what you expect. I mean, I can attest to that. As we've basically said, you know, things aren't explained much and also things pop up much later than we expect. So for instance, we find out about Stephen's past with the United Irishman or Jack's relationship with Molly Hart. It's slowly unspooled for us.

• 57:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, and it was in passing.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  Almost in passing, exactly. Or things are hinted at, but then they're never followed up. So I think people often say that a reader never likes to feel like they've been fed a piece of information on the page that they, that, you know, they then don't get their comeuppance on later or something.

• 58:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  Whereas in this book, that, that happens all the time. For instance, we're told that Mr. Marshall, the master is gay and later we're told that he adores Jack. So we think, where's his heading? Is there going to be some kind of a entanglement to confrontation? But nothing ever happens. It's just there. It's just an aspect of life on board. There are very few payoffs. I wouldn't say Jack gets a single complete payoff throughout the course of the book.

• 58:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  O'Brien would find that too Hollywood. I mean, so for example, Mr. Marshall, the Mr. Marshall thing is set up. You know, there's a couple of allusions to the fact that he's gay and you sort of, and then he, he likes Jack. And you think, well, where's this going to go? And actually, all it's going for is a very sort of throwaway Jane Austen kind of scene where Stephen accuses Jack of being portly. And Mr. Marshall, who's basically being played slightly for laugh, says, I don't agree. I think the captain has an uncommonly genteel figure. And it's funny and it's very Jane Austen. She's like, you know, that's exactly what Jane Austen would do. But O'Brien has given you that detail purely for the love of the world, rather than because it's serving a narrative point.

• 59:08Speaker 00

  It's impressive restraint, actually.

• 59:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. Or here's another thing. I mean, this rereading is so striking. Really big things happen off stage. So if you've seen the film, you may remember, you know, Stephen's brilliance as a surgeon is really important on the ship. And there's scenes with Paul Bettany, when he's like opening people's skulls and, you know.

• 59:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a big scene in the film, Matt.

• 59:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, it is a big scene in the film. Right. In the book, we are told Stephen is going to do something amazing. This gunner is going to die unless Stephen can open his skull and relieve the pressure on his brain. And everybody in the ship thinks this is unbelievable. We're like, well, when's this thing going to happen? Especially if you've seen the film. Fifty pages later, you find out it has happened, but you didn't get to see it because Jack is describing it. And he says to somebody, oh, yeah, Stephen's an amazing man. He opened our gunner's skull and roused out his brains, set them right, so stuff that back, stuff them back in again. I couldn't bear to look. And it's, I think that's such an interesting choice from Patrick O'Brien as a narrator, because basically what he's doing is giving you the sense, all this action is taking place in some other world, but the narrator

• 1:00:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  is picking and choosing which bits to show us. And we're not necessarily being shown the bits that we expect.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. And there's another thing that Master and Commander has in common with Jane Austen. And that is the, it's the intricacy of the world. So Jane Austen gives us this picture of a world. You describe it like the inside of a clock, which I think is so true. All the pieces fit together perfectly. So for instance, the Hertfordshire town where the Bennetts live in Pride and Prejudice or Highbury in Emma. So O'Brien's world is the world of the Royal Navy, especially in the Sophie, which is very intricate, elaborate. You know, it's full of the social hierarchy, the language, even the food, the environment.

• 1:00:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Speaker 00

  It's very small. Everybody has his place. Everybody plays their part. So that's similar. And we're introduced to it when Jack and Stephen go aboard, and it's full of these tiny details. So, you know, when Jack first goes aboard the Sophie, he sees the sails, the mast, the deck, the guns, all he's meant to see. He was blind to the things he was not meant to see. The piece of ham that an officious folks will cut, drag from behind a bucket, the girls, the masters' mates had hidden in the sailroom and who would keep peeping out from behind mounds of canvas. You know, all these tiny details that serve absolutely no purpose. Our main character doesn't even see them.

• 1:01:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, well, I think the implication is Jack perhaps has seen them.

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  Turns a blind eye.

• 1:01:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  Turns a blind eye to them because he doesn't want to have a massive row with the crew. But in those details like this, a goat who, the goat is actually defecating and staring at Jack while Jack is going to the boat. But in those little details, you get such a sense of the life of the ship, don't you? And that kind of world. And there was no compromise at all. I mean, that's the thing that you were alluding to, Tabby, with the language.

• 1:01:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  We're in this world with this 18th century narrator and the language. And this is the thing that a lot of readers struggle with. And I'm guessing there are people who read the book for this podcast who are like, do you know what? I didn't get on with this at all. I mean, we could give so many random examples. Here's one, page 59. "They cast off the gaskets, the lines that held the sails tight fell to the yards. They gathered the canvas under their arms and waited. Let fall came the order. Sheet home, sheet home, hoist away. Cheerly there in the foretop, look alive. To Gornsel's street sheets. Hands to the braces, billay."

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  Nobody has any right to know what that means.

• 1:02:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  There's like so many examples like this where your, your eye just glazes over and sort of, you're, you're staring at the, it's like reading Henry James. You're staring at the page, you're like, I have no idea what's going on.

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  It is not like reading Henry James. It is like reading the songs in Lord of the Rings. But as you said very early on, as an outsider, you'll never learn what this all means. Because there's a character who we're, whose eyes were seeing it all through and who we learn as he learns, and that's Stephen.

• 1:02:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  So we see it through Stephen's eyes. When Jack steps aboard the ship, he knows what everything is. When Stephen steps aboard the ship, he is baffled by everything. And so much of the comedy of the book comes from him just saying, what? I don't. So for example, when he's told where they're going to the toilets, and they have to go to the toilet outside of the heads in all weathers. When he's told that they're given half a pint of neat rum every day, and one of them for his birthday, the others all save up and give him their rum. He drinks it and dies.

• 1:03:20Speaker 00

  That's how it all had to go.

• 1:03:22Dominic Sandbrook?

  But above all, there's a bit where Mawett, who is a midshipman who writes poetry, that's brilliant. I love the fact that they've got this midshipman. So the midshipmen are the young trainee officers. And Mawett takes Stephen up to the top in the masts to show him the ship. And Stephen keeps asking questions. These triangles, why are they called stay sails? And Mawett just replies with more jargon. And Stephen eventually says to him, "You could not explain this maze of ropes and wood and canvas without using sea terms, I suppose. No, it would not be possible." And Mawett says, and is completely baffled, "Using no sea terms? I should be puzzled to do that, sir, but I will try if you wish it." And I suppose it's a little bit like explaining, trying to explain the rules of

• 1:04:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  cricket to an American or something like that. You just can't even start because it's, you either know it or you don't.

• 1:04:11Speaker 00

  He just so doesn't get it. And he never gets it. And a running joke is also the fact that Jack just can't get his head around Stephen not understanding or caring about the naval world, which is so sacred to him. It's so sacred to them all. I mean, they enter the profession so young.

• 1:04:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:04:26Speaker 00

  That it really is their, their life. So he realizes about 100 pages in that Stephen thinks Mr. Marshall, the master, is superior to the captain.

• 1:04:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  Jack cannot, that blows Jack's mind.

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  That would be like, that to Jack is like, I don't know, Prince Harry is superior to King Charles.

• 1:04:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:04:44Speaker 00

  Or something.

• 1:04:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  It's just absolutely, Jack says, but he's the master. "That Stephen could confuse the chain of command, so subverted the natural order, so undermined the sempiternal universe that for a moment his mind could hardly encompass it." Like Jack just cannot understand why Stephen could ever have thought that.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  And actually, reading it for the second time, I noticed this. I thought Patrick O'Brien gives you a little clue in how to read the book, in the way that the other Irish character, Lieutenant James Dillon, talks to Stephen. Because at one point, Dillon and Jack are trying to explain to Stephen the difference between a sloop and a brig, a commander and a captain, all of these kinds of things. And eventually Dillon kind of gives up and he says, you know, don't, don't let this grieve your heart, sir. He says, "The navy speaks in symbols, and you may suit what meaning you choose to the words."

• 1:05:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  And I think that's basically, to me, that's the key to reading these books, is that you're never going to know like the difference between a topsail, a four-gallant, and whatever the other things are. Don't even bother. Just assume that stuff is happening. And it's, and actually, that really improves your reading experience, I would say.

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's not a book about the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. It's about human relationships and how these men are defined by their relationships with each other.

• 1:06:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:05Speaker 00

  Obviously, the heart of it is the friendship between Jack and Stephen. It's only developing in this book, but it becomes a really, I mean, I think even by the end of this book, it's a rather lovely fictional friendship. It's the ultimate bromance. The point is that they're so different. And I like this because even though they fit together so perfectly, they're perfect foils. It doesn't feel predictable. It feels believable and authentic. They're opposites. Jack is jolly, patriotic, honest. Stephen's sardonic, brooding, subtle. And that's what makes their relationship so special. And the novelist Iris Murdoch compared them to Achilles and Patroclus.

• 1:06:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. Do you know that?

• 1:06:44Speaker 00

  Quite funny. But her husband, the literary critic, John Bailey, said they're more like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. I think that's fair.

• 1:06:52Dominic Sandbrook?

  But turned upside down. Yeah.

• 1:06:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. So Watson is the leader and Holmes the sidekick. But I actually don't think there is a leader and a sidekick in this.

• 1:07:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Okay.

• 1:07:00Speaker 00

  I think they're on an even keel.

• 1:07:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think they are on an even keel. Actually, in a later book, The Union Mission, there's a lovely description. "Although they were almost as unlike as men could be, unlike in nationality, religion, education, size, shape, profession, habit of mind, they were united in a deep love for music. And many and many an evening had they played together, violin, answering cello, or both singing together far into the night." And actually, the music there, I think, it's not just about music. That's almost a metaphor for something indefinable, which exists in any friendship or any close relationship, I suppose, which is, I guess it's chemistry, magnetism. It's just that indefinable. You can't explain why you're great friends with somebody if they're a bit different from you, but just a natural sympathy in some way that you fit together, right?

• 1:07:43Speaker 00

  But I also think Jack, the element, the music adds a real depth to Jack's otherwise, you know, quite obvious, open character. It's this great man cradling this little instrument and making, you know, pretty sounds.

• 1:07:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  And the chemistry that they have is thrown into relief because there's a, in this book, there's a third character, Lieutenant James Dillon.

• 1:08:01Speaker 00

  I'm a big fan of Dillon as a character, not necessarily as a man, but he's a great character.

• 1:08:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  Because Stephen and Dillon had been involved in the revolt of the United Irishmen. So this was a secret society, revolutionary brotherhood, really, that was sort of fighting for Irish independence in 1798 with French aid. And they were bloodily put down.

• 1:08:22Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Stephen has lost his radical faith as a result of it. He says to Dylan, you know, I'm never going to get involved in nationalism again. The only feelings I have are for men as individuals, my loyalties, such as they may be, are for now for private persons alone. Dylan has taken it very differently, though. Dylan is brooding, he is dark. Stephen says Dylan is 10 octaves lower down and in a darker key.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  Lovely writing.

• 1:08:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, it's like a little bit paranoid. And there's a terrible moment for Dylan when they are told they're going to pass an American ship, where there are two, there may well be two men of the United Irishmen aboard in disguise. And you have to go and identify them. And for Dylan, this is absolutely terrible because he's going to have to go on to the ship and then lie and say he hasn't found them, which conflicts, you know, his loyalties are in conflict. Because he really is a, he believes in his duty as a naval officer. But of course, he, like, really like Stephen, he had this other side to him, which was an Irish revolutionary.

• 1:09:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I actually think Dylan also is potentially a bit of a window into the psyche of Patrick O'Brien himself, because he writes about Dylan's struggle with real sympathy, perhaps reflecting his own struggle with his own identity. He describes Dylan caught between different loyalties. So I quote, he had known that there was no way out, that whatever course he took would be dishonorable. But he had never imagined that dishonor could be so painful. And that's very well observed. And he describes Dylan lying awake in his cabin, his unhappiness curdling into hatred for all those who never having had a moment's conflict of duty or honor in their lives, could condemn him out of hand. That's really astute, I think.

• 1:10:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  Totally, I agree. It's but such psychological insight.

• 1:10:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a very nuanced strain of bitterness that I think surely the kind of business you can only write about if you've known it.

• 1:10:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  Hmm.

• 1:10:13Speaker 00

  And he comes to focus all of his hatred and his resentment on Jack Aubrey. You know, Jack Aubrey is not the kind of man that lies there at night with his stomach curdling. You know, except maybe because he's eaten too much cheese or something.

• 1:10:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, he loves a toasted cheese, Jack.

• 1:10:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, he does. He doubts Jack's courage. He hates Jack's obsession with prizes and money. He says at one point, he's a prize hunting captain or something, doesn't he? Which he thinks is to his discredit. And he can't see how decent Jack really is. So Dylan represents this key theme in the book, which is the question of how a man is defined and what his identity is, whether he can be more than a sum of his parts.

• 1:10:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:51Speaker 00

  And each of them has to choose a persona, the part that he plays on board the ship.

• 1:10:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  Jack has to do that when he boards the ship, doesn't he, as captain?

• 1:10:58Speaker 00

  Yes, I, I thought this was a really good moment when he feels a slight sense of loss over not being the crew's equal anymore, because to be the crew's equal means that they would look down on you and they won't respect you as a captain. But it also means that, you know, they hush slightly when he walks into the room.

• 1:11:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, and Jack feels that because he used to be one of them. And now he's the boss. And so they're exactly that. They, they all fall quiet when he's there and he can't join in on their, in their games and their fun and all of that.

• 1:11:26Speaker 00

  There's that bit in the film when there's a young lieutenant and he actually ends up throwing himself off board eventually, I think. He's, he's known as the Jonah, but the crew can't stand him because he starts trying to be one of them, singing their songs. And Jack tries to explain to him that this unsettles them.

• 1:11:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, exactly. Right, exactly. So they talk about this, don't they? I think it's a really nice passage when Stephen and Jack talk about this over coffee. They're talking about their identity, your identity you choose. And Jack is confused, of course, Jack's confused by the question. He doesn't get it. He says, identity is not something, identity you're born with. And Stephen says, no, no, no, there's nothing absolute about this identity of mine. Identity is something that hovers between a man and the rest of the world, a midpoint between his view of himself and theirs of him. For each, of course, affects the other continually, a reciprocal fluxion, sir. And I think this is a big theme of the series, because this reciprocal fluxion is what makes the, the ships, what makes the navy, what makes the books tick.

• 1:12:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  It's this idea of different men working together for a common goal. And Tabby, if you'll forgive me for being massively self-indulgent, to allude to a book from later in the series, there is, you know, that, so that editor, he flew home with book 11, The Reverse of the Medal. And you said, God, bonkers to be reading, you know, a book 11 in the series. But The Reverse of the Medal has a scene in it that I think is one of the most moving scenes I've ever read. Genuinely, I, I, I'm going to shame myself now. I read this scene and I was like a massive wreck. And having Googled it, I'm pleased to see, having read the Patrick O'Brien Reddit thread, that loads of other people feel the same. So you know, you, you mentioned Cochrane had been framed.

• 1:13:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:13:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  Stock exchange. Jack has the same thing. This is a big spoiler, so people should stop listening if they are really going to read all 11 books.

• 1:13:17Speaker 00

  But remain listening if you'd like to see Dominic cry.

• 1:13:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, thanks, Tabby. So, um, Jack is framed for manipulating the stock market. It's a politically biased trial. He's led out to the pillory. And people are going to throw, you know, rotten vegetables or whatever.

• 1:13:29Speaker 00

  Oh, I, I have to say, you know, knowing Jack as I now do.

• 1:13:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Speaker 00

  That's hard to hear.

• 1:13:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  It's really hard to hear because you know, his dignity is so important to him. And also he's so patriotic and for the British people to be about to turn on him. Anyway, he's led out into the light, up onto the sort of the scaffold where the pillory is. And he is stunned to find that in front of him, the crowd is made up entirely of his old crews and his old comrades. And, and the quote is, he saw the broad street was filled with silent attentive men, some in long togs, some in shore-going rig, some in plain frocks, but all perfectly recognizable as seamen. And officers by the dozen, by the score, midshipmen and officers. Babington was there, immediately in front of the pillory, facing him with his hat off and pullings.

• 1:14:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  Stephen, of course, Mawatt, Dundas, Parker, Rowan, Williamson, Hervey, and men from long, long ago, men he could scarcely name. Lieutenants and commanders putting their promotion at risk. Midshipmen and mastersmates their commissions, warrant officers their advancement. God, I was worried I wasn't going to get through that.

• 1:14:35Speaker 00

  I, I, I've never seen you so, genuinely.

• 1:14:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  So he's forced into the pillory and then one of them shouts, off hats! And with one movement, hundreds of broad-brimmed tarpaulin-covered hats flew off and the cheering began, the fierce, full-throated cheering he had so often heard in battle. It's such a lovely moment.

• 1:14:54Speaker 00

  You, you'd be a terrible person if you had anything cynical to say to that. That's wonderful. I like to think, if I, I know it to be true, that if you got sent to the pillory in the middle of London and you can march through the streets like Cersei Lannister, you're.

• 1:15:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  Hold on, she's naked.

• 1:15:15Speaker 00

  Your producers from The Rest Is History and The Book Club will all turn off and pull off our tarpaulins and give you a hearty cheer.

• 1:15:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  Thanks, Tabby.

• 1:15:26Speaker 00

  That should cheer you up. Anyway, unmanly tears are streaming down your face and frankly, the producers are embarrassed now. So it's time to bury this terrible scene beneath the sands of time and talk about what we made of the book.

• 1:15:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  Okay.

• 1:15:41Speaker 00

  As the captain and commander of our beloved man-o-war, The Book Club, I shall go first.

• 1:15:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  I knew that was coming.

• 1:15:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  But we haven't said what you're marking him. I want to pull rank as an honorary member of the Nelson Society and say, it's not in this book, but Jack loves puddings and his favorite pudding is called a spotted dog.

• 1:15:59Speaker 00

  What's in that?

• 1:16:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  It's like a spotted dick, basically, I think, but they called it spotted dog in those days. Because that's what Jack would have wanted.

• 1:16:04Speaker 00

  So I really love the rich naval world O'Brien conjures. I'm impressed by his impeccable research. I really like the two protagonists. And I really like what James Dillon brings with his, you know, his identity crisis, his brooding darkness. I think it's an important balancer. There's nothing cliched in the characterizations. Matt Turin especially is wonderfully nuanced, very ambiguous. Jack, big, bluff, adventurous, food-loving, what's not to love? I really liked the elegance of the speech and the wit of the conversation and, and the word, the fact that he used these archaic words like commodious and, and stuff like that. And all of this makes it quite comforting. And I, I did feel its absence once I was done with it, I have to say.

• 1:16:46Speaker 00

  And I actually think the ending, you know, James Dillon's redemption is so far as he needs it.

• 1:16:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:51Speaker 00

  The ending was well done. I, I think I always respect a book that has the self-discipline not to give the reader all this, all the, everything it want, everything they want, you know?

• 1:17:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, they hold something back. There's a restraint to it.

• 1:17:06Speaker 00

  But I found it quite hard to get into, particularly at the beginning. The endless lectures on mainmasts, poop decks, lard boards. The scene transitions, very confusing. I wasn't emotionally moved by it. There was actually a big part of me that missed. I know it's very Jane Austen, but it is not Jane Austen in its drama and its emotional drama and its emotional payouts. So I missed that a little bit. So I was going to give it a six, but I'm now going to give it a seven. You've persuaded me.

• 1:17:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think that's quite low. Although actually, I'm going to give it eight.

• 1:17:36Speaker 00

  That's one mark above mine.

• 1:17:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  I know, I know, but, I know, I know. I've made a massive fuss about you giving it one mark lower. But actually, one mark is not really that big a difference in the grand scheme of things. I'm giving it an eight because I think I did, the first time I read it, I did find it hard to get into. I think it clearly isn't for everybody. A lot of people are put off by the naval jargon. But also I think they get better. So I think by the time you get to the reverse of the medal, say, so in the middle books, let's say books five to 12 or something, he's away and it's great. But at this stage, he's, it's not quite as funny as it later becomes.

• 1:18:11Speaker 00

  I didn't find it that funny, I have to say.

• 1:18:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  There's more eccentricity in the later books. There's more kind of mad things that happen to them. The relationship between Jack and Stephen is much more developed. And actually crucially, Tabby, one thing we haven't really talked about at all. There are obviously virtually no female characters in this. But in later books, there are, so there's Jack's wife. There is also Diana Villiers, who is a brilliant character, who Stephen ends up falling in love with and has this very turbulent relationship with Diana.

• 1:18:40Speaker 00

  Aren't they love rivals at one point?

• 1:18:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  They are, they are love rivals for Diana. And all of that stuff is brilliantly done. And there's a lot of Jane Austen-style action back in England with Jack's house and his family and his father and his in-laws and all of that, which is real, you know, there's a lot of it and it's really, really nicely brought out. So that's, all of that is to say, there is so much more to come in that series.

• 1:19:03Speaker 00

  We'll be dedicating the rest of the year to Master and Commander.

• 1:19:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  We might come back to, I mean, we might come back to it. I think it would be fun to come back to it.

• 1:19:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  So Tabby, tell us about the delights to come.

• 1:19:13Speaker 00

  What's coming up? So we have To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John O'Caray, Task the Dervils by Thomas Hardy and Dune by Frank Herbert.

• 1:19:23Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, I'm off to have some spotted dog. Bye, Tabby. Bye, everybody.

• 1:19:26Speaker 00

  Bye.