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Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World Director: Peter Weir; Producer: Samuel Goldwyn Jr; Screenplay: Peter Weir and John Collee. Based on the 'Aubrey/Maturin' series of novels by Patrick O'Brian
O'Brian's World
In October 1994 the Painted Hall of the Royai Naval College at Greenwich was the venue for a 'Dinner in Celebration of the Achievement of Patrick O'Brian C.B.E.', with O'Brian himself as guest of honour. The food was a modern interpretation of traditional shipboard fare - pea soup, salt beef and figgy dowdy (only more Michelin-starred) - the music was by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Band of the Royal Marines, Portsmouth, and the distinguished actor Robert Hardy read excerpts from O'Brian's books. The diners were, if anything, even more distinguished: both Houses of Parliament were well represented; senior Royal Naval officers were there in some numbers; lions of the literary and publishing worlds rubbed shoulders with journalists, and an ambassador chatted with a rock star. The biggest single grouping by profession was of naval historians, normally a disputatious bunch, but on this occasion for once all in agreement: Patrick O'Brian's 'Aubrey/Maturin' series of novels was one of the best things to happen to the study of the Royal Navy in the Nelson era in donkey's years. However, the politicians, the cooks, the musicians, the doctors, the lawyers, the literati, could equally claim him for their own. This dinner was, if you like, polite old Britain's way of honouring an author whose historical novels had generated something of a following.
America does things differently. Readers on the other side of the Atlantic were slower to pick up on the merits of the novels, but once they did - whoa, stand back! In Britain the books had sold in what eventually became respectable numbers throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but in the States sales had languished; for some years they weren't even published there. Then in the early 1990s one enthusiastic review changed everything, and suddenly they became a phenomenon, in sales terms very nearly a Harry Potter for grown-ups. Cyberspace abounds with O'Brian-related sites, chat-rooms, and newsletters. What's more, where once naval historical fiction was a somewhat derided genre, now there are myriad companion books tailored to...