Patrick O'Brian {A life Revealed] -- by Dean King

 

I thought I had Dean King's Patrick O'Brian figured out after just three chapters, but I was only partly correct. Patrick O'Brian had been revealed as an off-beat, sometimes anti-social man who walled off his sometimes distracting family, so he could write great books and make money.

O'Brian's real surname was Russ, who indirectly seemed to have gotten the name change idea from two nephews who had moved to Australia. But obviously, it worked for him.

He grew up mostly in the London area, but his mother died when he was still a boy. His father was a doctor and inventor. One of his many uncles had shown early interest in writing, but that faded. Richard Patrick (O'Brian) Russ didn't fail there, serving as an intelligence officer in WWII, and started his writing successes with magazine articles that drew attention, which allowed him to build on, and eventually get the call to write about sailing adventures in the late 1960s with Master and Commander published in 1969.

Master and Commander was a joint U.S. and British venture, looking for a good replacement for C.S. Forester and his hero Horatio Hornblower. Captain Jack Aubrey and Surgeon Stephen Maturin sailed to almost instantaneous success. The series finished in double-digit volumes, and in effect died with O'Brian's passing in 2000.

Despite his protective walls, O'Brian lived an adventurous life. He was married twice and had one son. A young daughter died of poor health. O'Brian lived in Wales for several years before moving to the coastal South of France for the rest of his life. He found many things to his liking on the Catalan sea coast of the Mediterranean.

"O'Brian recognized in Coullioure an authentic people and place, with a tolerance for individuality that suited him. Here his poverty, which he was determined to endure in order to write, would not be so degrading as in England."

O'Brian found the place where sailing boats in the view from his home, could help exact exciting, reader-pleasing adventures.

Celebrities like the painter Picasso were there often enough to keep life interesting, but Coullioure was its own entertainment and inspiration.

"Coullioure had a rugged, earthy physicality and raw beauty, the people of Coullioure, a wild dark attraction.'