C. S. Forester

C. S. Forester (1899-1966) wrote several novels with military and naval themes, including The African Queen, The Barbary Pirates, The General, The Good Shepherd, The Gun, The Last Nine Days of the "Bismarck", and Rifleman Dodd. But Forester is best known as the creator of Horatio Hornblower, a British naval genius of the Napoleonic era, whose exploits and adventures on the high seas Forester chronicled in a series of eleven acclaimed historical novels. Over the years, Hornblower has proved to be one of the most beloved and enduring fictional heroes in English literature, his popularity rivaled only by Sherlock Holmes.

Articles by this Author

Bloodshed At Dawn, October 1964 | Vol. 15, No. 6

Should Commodore Barron have surrendered his ship? Should Decatur have criticised him? Their famous duel ended in … bloodshed at dawn

Victory On Lake Champlain, December 1963 | Vol. 15, No. 1

Hundreds of miles from salt water, two tiny, improvised fleets hammered away at each other in one of the decisive naval engagements of the War of 1812

The Battle of the Saintes, June 1958 | Vol. 9, No. 4

No American ships were involved, yet on its outcome hung Great Britain’s recognition of our independence

Victory at New Orleans, August 1957 | Vol. 8, No. 5

Andrew Jackson won a stunning victory over a veteran British army that would eventually propel him to the White House

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Ambrose, Stephen E.

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Kai Bird is a historian and Executive Director of Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He is best known for writing about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, US-Middle East relations and biographies of political figures. Bird is the author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames, a New York Times bestseller. His most recent book is The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

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