40. Master And Commander: The History Behind the Epic

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0:03Dominic 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. And yet so many authors credit their literary genius with letting their minds wander, and our bookshelves would be far emptier without that. 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. What's really helpful is that everything about your money is now in one scrollable view.

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3:42Well, gentlemen, Jack said after they had drunk the King's health.

3:46Dominic Sandbrook: 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. Huzzah! Well done! Hear, hear! Topping news! Good 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. Lord Keith was delighted when I told him. Jack went on. Said he envied us extremely, had no physician in the flagship, was amazed when I told him of the gunner's brains.

4:31Dominic Sandbrook: 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. Nor had anyone there present. The order had to be wetted. Three bottles of port there, Killick. 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, Huzzay! Huzzay! Huzzay! Huzzay! Huzzay! Huzzay! I thought you were going to miss out on Hussé there Tabby, that would have been disastrous. I wouldn't dream of that kind of insubordination.

5:09So 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 Albury and Dr. Stephen Maturin. Captain Jack there played by Russell Crowe.

5:38Dominic Sandbrook: Exactly. Beautifully I thought. Thank you. Who was playing everybody else? What the 30-man crew? That was all me. That was all you. Unbelievable. 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.

6:22I absolutely love the film. It's one of my top 10 films of all time. 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, I wish Oscars were still like that. That's the ultimate win-win for me, really.

6:42Dominic Sandbrook: Well, actually, good films. So yeah, I think everybody loves the 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 maturing that we meet in the cinema are very different from the aubrey and maturing on the page on the page they're one of the great double acts and 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.

7:17Dominic Sandbrook: So Aaliyah, 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 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. Yeah, so given all this, there's loads to talk about here. The characters, the style, which is unique.

7:51And 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 onto 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 exactly so interesting but let's go back to the beginning and let's start by reminding

8:26Dominic Sandbrook: people what the book is actually about 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 you know 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 organization of any kind oh patriotic chills 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 yeah it takes a lot of care over its sailors doesn't it it does yeah yeah right i mean there's this amazing fact that basically the healthiest people in the world probably the people on royal navy ships because they've been given fruits and vegetables and all this stuff anyway extraordinary the book opens on the spanish island of minorca so that's a british base in the mediterranean and our hero is Jack Aubrey, who is this big bloke.

9:37Dominic Sandbrook: 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. Did you not see that coming, Tubby? Yeah. He likes a hearty meal as well. He does. He likes a pudding. Yeah. He, like you, is a very, is a John Bull character. 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's dark haired he's untidy he's a bit shambolic but he's a brilliant man he's got a sardonic sense of humor 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 Darwin and all that.

10:30Dominic 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 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 other oceans with their crew and they fight and capture enemy ships or they are trying to escape enemy ships.

11:07Dominic Sandbrook: And they have all of these kinds of adventures and they become greater and greater friends as the series progresses. 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 the ship, the Sophie, is actually sort of a character in herself. This is not a book full of female characters, but 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 sales.

11:44Another 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 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 absolutely 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 albury but also uh enmity poison erupts very quickly as well yes completely and the other point is the writing itself it's this remarkable style modeled 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 yeah so a really wonderful part of it i thought was the conversation the characters have these extremely authentic conversations you know 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 colorful life of the guy that inspired jack albury thomas cochran but before we do that let's talk a

13:08Dominic Sandbrook: little bit about what you know your history with the book so yeah i started reading these about about 15 years ago, maybe longer. I have to admit, when I first read Master and Commander, I was really underwhelmed. Really? I did not know that. 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. Aw, sad. 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.

13:42Dominic Sandbrook: 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 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 generally read one a year I sort of rations them and I would read them on my summer holiday I love that I would read one a year I'd get back into that world I can well imagine you curling your lip at this tabby um it's like being reintroduced to old friends again no I don't curl my lip at that at all that's how I see books that I love.

14:12Dominic Sandbrook: Well, that's good. What about you? I'd never read it before. My dad was devoted to these books. So 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 - Adulation. 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 realized that the film was made up of three books. Again, as you say, I was overwhelmed and mystified by all the rope.

14:48And 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 like that there's nothing cliched or predictable really in this book I like the impeccable dialogue yeah it is a feckin diagram of a ship at times yeah and 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 there's nothing to tell you really that the scene has shifted.

15:28So I struggled with that, but I did really like the world.

15:32Dominic 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? 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 W.W. 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.

16:11It doesn't seem a particularly exciting proposition. It's a novel about the Royal Navy and the Napoleonic Wars. I mean yeah 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 an author in 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 don't feel like this is the kind of book that maybe you get hooked onto 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 yeah it's a lovely story isn't it yeah 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

17:13Dominic Sandbrook: that they got given the chance completely to be let out well they'd sort of fallen between two stools so they people 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 we also 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 write 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 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 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 u.s 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 it's definitely true that there is a conservative audience for these books So particularly among men.

18:34Dominic Sandbrook: 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 series of books. With at its core, the friendship between two blokes. Because that's quite a rare thing, I think, 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.

19:10Dominic Sandbrook: 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. 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 has 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.

19:49Surely 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 the dream. It is. 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.

20:26And he was privately tutored. and crucially he had been a sailor most of his life because he was recommended sea air as a cure

20:36Dominic Sandbrook: for his illness when he was unwell yeah 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 yeah and if you're a patrick o 'brien fan And you're like, brilliant. This is exactly what I wanted to hear. Yeah. Because Ireland, the gentry, fox hunting, a governess, sailing, the Sorbonne, natural sciences. This is 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 two extraordinary fictions.

21:15Dominic Sandbrook: One of them is the Aubrey Mature in series, and the other is his own life. So odd. 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 expose in the Daily Telegraph in 1998. And the Daily Telegraph, which, of course, is read by people who love his book, 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.

21:50Dominic Sandbrook: 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 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 sailoring 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 then we should set off from france we should 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 balearic irons like majorca minorca whatever such an error from patrick o 'brien here like Clearly, I don't know, his eyes were bigger than his belly or something.

22:49Because if you know you can't do this, no matter how tempting 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.

23:00Dominic Sandbrook: Exactly. So Tom Perkins was like, hold on, we've got two weeks? I mean, we probably can't even get to the first place on the list. Let's break records. 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 report on this, he says very laconically, I began to suspect that his autobiographical references to his months at sea as a youth were fanciful.

23:40I find this also odd though, because, okay, so first of all, you take that incident, the sailing. O 'Brien's fake identity is modelled on Maturin, who's not a seaman himself. So as in, just don't pretend to be a sailor. But also then winding it all the way back is such a shame because 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 does he do it in the first place well the amazing thing

24:22Dominic Sandbrook: is he created the fiction of his own life well before he started writing these books 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. Of the Tolstoy. Leo Tolstoy. Yeah, exactly. Nevertheless, things still look a bit ambiguous because Tolstoy said that even such seemingly simple facts as his change of name and invention of a wholly imaginary past are still mysterious.

25:03Dominic Sandbrook: So his name isn't Patrick O 'Brien. Well, his original name. He was born Richard Patrick Russ, wasn't he? Kind of American name. 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. I'd never wear real furs, but yeah, I would literally lather and slather myself in fake fur. Okay. One of your elaborate coats that you love to wear. Yeah. Anyway, his father is a doctor. He's called Charles, and he's not a very good doctor.

25:34Dominic Sandbrook: So his father is always trying to devise new cures for gonorrhea, which is a funny interest. So a bit like Stephen Maturin, who's always experimenting with new cures. And O 'Brien's father, or Patrick's father, he's really interested in his 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 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.

26:11Dominic 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. Probably all of his stuff about, you know, Irish gentry and hunting and governesses maybe comes from her. Oh, yes, quite possibly. And indeed, his second wife was quite posh, wasn't she? So he might have 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.

26:48Dominic Sandbrook: So basically, he invented this fantasy childhood. It's like wish fulfilment, right? Completely wish fulfillment. And people would say to him, he's the kind of person whose books appeal, basically, to public school boys. Yeah. 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. Yeah. 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.

27:18I wonder if also because, you know, being one of nine and losing your mother at a young age, maybe, you know, 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, so 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. Yeah. And that may well have been true. He certainly was a very keen and very precocious writer from a young age.

27:51So in 1927, when he was 12, he wrote the novel Caesar, the life story of a panda leopard, which was published three years later.

27:59Dominic Sandbrook: I looked that up. It's such a sweet story. The creature is half panda, half leopard. Oh, lovely. That's quite sweet. Yeah, lovely. 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 yeah and don't forget he's a teenager at this point yeah i mean this is pretty impressive yeah but now he's an adult so he needs a job yeah 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 Richard 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 yeah 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 although as we'll see identity and making stuff up about your identity becomes an important thing in the books.

29:32Very true. Then comes the war.

29:33Dominic Sandbrook: Yeah. Well, again, 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. It's like a line from Ian Fleming. 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, Nicolai. 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.

30:08Dominic Sandbrook: 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 that by this point don't forget he's still richard patrick russ but because russ is a german name he's 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, who's got divorced herself, in the summer of 1945.

30:54Dominic Sandbrook: 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's a rejection of his father, this failed doctor. You know, he wants to put all that behind him. But why O 'Brien? Why an Irish name? No one knows. Tolstoy says he might have got it. And this particular spelling of O 'Brien, by the way, which is not the usual one. Tolstoy says he might have 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.

31:32Dominic Sandbrook: 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. Very odd. Maybe he was just very convincing. She must have known. She would have met him. He wasn't called Patrick O 'Brien. Anyway, who knows? 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.

32:09He 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 yeah and this is such a funny thing because this is basically

32:40Dominic Sandbrook: 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 they were 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 you know 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 stories maybe invent some new characters and completely randomly he has seen these kid book kids 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.

33:40And at that point, you know, these books could have gone in any way.

33:44Dominic Sandbrook: And this is where the genius of Patrick O 'Brien comes in, because he throws himself into it in just this remarkable manner. 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 is 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.

34:18And 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. And he pours 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.

34:54And 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? No. Surely, not even for Nelson Hero of the Seas.

35:08Dominic Sandbrook: I was been waiting, like, how long have I 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? Yeah. So on his desk at home, he has a universal dictionary of the Marine from 1769 and a histoire générale 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 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 so they're not a mass market phenomenon yeah they're not horn blower 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.

36:57Dominic Sandbrook: 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. means, 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.

37:33Oh, my God. Every lie is like worst nightmare, isn't it?

37:36Dominic Sandbrook: Right. Because, of course, he's now he's used to telling tall 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.

38:12Dominic Sandbrook: He ended up being given rooms at Trinity College, Dublin. I mean, that Irish thing again. So, yeah, fantasy endures. But they themselves wanted to believe in it, right? They were like, oh, let's have this great Irish writer come home. And he finished his last book, Blue at the Mizen, that came out in 1999. Wasn't there an unfinished book? There is. The Last Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey. So basically, 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, I think. Anyway, he died in January 2000.

38:45Dominic Sandbrook: but Tabby his legacy endures in these books I guess which are much more important than his life. 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 ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease symptoms don't pause for the moments that matter that's why understanding your treatment options matters discover what's possible with Trimphaya Guselcomab Trimphaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis.

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40:41Welcome back to the book club. So before we get back in, Midshipman Zanbrook 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 menorca 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 and 30 whose big form overflowed his seat he was wearing his best uniform the white lapeled 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 tanned gazed fixedly at the bow of the first violin.

41:48You learn so much about Jack Albury 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, let me entreat you to do so in time and not half a beat ahead.

42:11Dominic Sandbrook: So the good news for everybody is that Tavia spared us that Irish accent. Yeah. Which she was tempted to do there. I don't want to do that to Irish listeners. 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. Yeah. He's a man of emotion. He's earnest. He's sincere. and he just can't stop beating the time to the music.

42:45Dominic Sandbrook: Great appetites. 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 match says mine sarah's match you're in i want to be found any morning at jossalito's coffee house may i beg you to stand aside so these are our two main characters these are our homes and watson the people who are going to become 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 in 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 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 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 hear such little music we're so little used to genteel company that we go carried away i beg your pardon i forgot to do rossal crowe's voice so everyone will forgive me 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 likable 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 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 steven's love of birds and nature they get on famously and they agree to have dinner later and then steven reveals that he's a doctor he's not a surgeon though there's a difference and sophie is a surgeon down but at last he agrees he's he's always poor steven um so he agrees to come on board 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 i'll put on that hat what 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 is based really on the industrial revolution but also on the navy so to quote ledyard's naval history of britain which was published 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.

47:03Dominic Sandbrook: So when the book kicks off in 1800, the Royal Navy are in the Mediterranean, they're blockading enemy ports and harbours, 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. I was very excited when I saw that. I like these like real world references. Yeah.

47:36Dominic Sandbrook: Well, I mean, you mentioned to Tabby that, you know, I'm a big Nelson fan, which I am. You are one of the biggest. A big fan of Nelson. I don't remember the Nelson Society. Yeah. And also you are currently recording in an office that has a... 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 list who's a big listener to the show who's descended both from the nelson family and from admiral hood which is incredible that is that is some excellent naval lineage 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 yeah everyone laughs russell crowe says it's kind of very seriously and then he's obviously he's joking yeah 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 asked for the salt in the same way that nelson did then they were talking about tactics and nelson said to uh jack never mind maneuvers 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 go straight at it no subtlety no tact and then the final thing now for the moment that we'll see you don your your cry bib cry bib is that a is that a thing is that 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 oh it is good stuff it does send a bit of a shiver down your spine surely yeah i mean maybe it's better when russell crowe does it and the ryan's are slightly different no difference but but there is i mean nelson there was this story that nelson had said this yeah and again by making jack believe it and latin 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 he is what he is i think there's a line in the book at one point it made me chuckle at the time i have to say it said something it was something like he loved a battle he loved a wench who doesn't 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 cochran 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 yeah crazy i don't i can't remember the exact details but he basically single-handedly defeated this fleet or something 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 polionic 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 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 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 cochran was framed partly i think because it was radicalism yeah and and because he'd made so many enemies along the way yeah so he was kicked out of parliament he was sacked from the navy and he 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 yeah 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.

52:00So 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 Menorcan station commander. He's having an affair with Molly Hart, Captain Hart's wife. Like Cochrane, Jack is given a small brig and cochran and jack are both devoted to these small brigs as their first command so this is the sophie and cochran's was hms speedy which is so cool love that like cochran 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

53:04Dominic Sandbrook: of gunpowder there is 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 um russell crow reveals his uh captain's uniform he takes off his whaler's coat and reveals his british uniform oh such good stuff and like cochran jack also loves to board enemy ships and gets his men to blacken their faces before they attack yeah and then finally like cochran he makes his name with an incredible feat capturing a much larger spanish ship in reality cochran 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.

53:51And the gamo lost loads. Yeah. And in the book, Jack captures the cacafuego. And that's a wonderful scene, I have to say. But all this makes it sound as if the book is a thinny 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 right I know that's not the point

54:19Dominic Sandbrook: but well actually I think sometimes the book is that it's most at its best when nothing is happening at all so here's the 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 it does pull at your heartstrings a little bit no 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 that's so true yeah the way that steven speaks in particular is so elaborate 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 but as i said earlier i i struggled with the scene shifts how one minute you're having the stream of consciousness and say someone's head like james dylan who will meet and then the next thing you know it's fire the broadside or whatever or they're at a different port i lost i totally lost the thread of the geography yeah 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 yeah 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're 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 to know you i quite I like Bernard Cornwell's books, but there's no doubt whatsoever that when you read like Uhtred, Son of Uhtred or Sharp or whatever, that Bernard Cornwell is a 20th century writer deep down.

57:10Dominic Sandbrook: He's constructed that novel to appeal to 20th century readers. 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 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 recognisably 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. I agree completely. And I think the narrator feels like we're being told the story by a narrator who lives in the 1800s.

57:51Dominic Sandbrook: And a narrator who is quite knowing, is quite dryly ironic, who is amused by what he's telling us, but is very much of that world and not ours. Yeah, exactly. So when you first read the book, the narrative style definitely is one you expect. I mean, I can attest to that. As we've basically said, 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. Yes. And it was in passing. Almost in passing, exactly. Or things are hinted at, but then they're never followed up.

58:29So 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 then don't get their comeuppance on later or something. Yeah, exactly. Whereas in this book, 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 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.

59:01Dominic Sandbrook: Brian would find that to 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 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 laughs 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 it's impressive restraint actually 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 the scenes with paul betony when it's like opening people's skulls to and you know yeah it's a big scene in the film that yeah it is a big scene in the film right in the book we are told steven is going to do something amazing this gunner is going to die unless steven 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 scene going to happen especially if you've seen the film 50 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 steven's an amazing man he opened our gun and skull and roused out his brain 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 is picking and choosing which bits to show us and we're not necessarily being shown the bits that we expect yeah and there's another thing that master and commander has in common with Jane Austen and that is the in 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 Bennets live in Pride and Prejudice or Highbury and 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 yeah it's very small everybody has this 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 mask 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 drag from behind a bucket the girls the master's mates had hidden in the sail room 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 yeah well i think the implication is jack perhaps has seen them turns a blind eye turns a blind eye to them because he doesn't want to have a massive row with the crew when he but in those details like there's a goat who the goat is actually defecating and staring at jack while jack is goes onto the boat but in those little details you get It's such a sense of the life of the ship, don't you?

1:02:23Dominic Sandbrook: 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. Yeah. 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've 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.

1:02:50Dominic Sandbrook: let fall came the order she'd home she'd home hoist away cheerily there in the fort up look alive to garansal street sheets hands to the braces billet nobody has any right to know what that means 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 it's 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 whose eyes we're seeing it all through and who we learn as he learns and that's Stephen 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 toilet and they have to go to the toilet outside of the heads in all weathers when he's told that they give him 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 that's how we'd all like to go but above all there's a bit where mawet who is a midshipman who writes poetry that's brilliant i love the fact that they've got this midshipman so the midshipman young trainee officers and mawet takes stephen up to the top in the mast to show him the ship and Stephen keeps asking questions these triangles why are they called stay sails and Mowat just replies with more jargon and Stephen eventually says to him you could not explain this maze of ropes and wooden canvas without using c-terms I suppose no it would not be possible and Mowat says and is completely baffled using no c-terms I should be puzzled to do that sir but I will try if you wish it yeah and I suppose it's a little bit like explaining trying to explain the rules of 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 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 yes of course that it really is their their life So he realises about 100 pages in that Stephen thinks Mr.

1:05:06Marshall, the master, is superior to the captain.

1:05:09Dominic Sandbrook: Jack, that blows Jack's mind. Yeah, that would be like that to Jack is like, I don't know, Prince Harry is superior to King Charles or something. 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 undermines 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. Yeah. And actually reading it for a 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.

1:05:50Dominic Sandbrook: 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 dylan 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 yeah 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 the top sale 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 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 yeah 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 even sardonic brooding subtle and that's what makes their relationship so special and the novelist iris murdoch compared them to achilles and patroclus yeah do you not like that 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 but turned upside down yeah 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 okay i think they're on an even keel i think they are on an even keel actually in a later book the only admission there's a lovely description although they were almost as unlike as men could be unlike in nationality religion education size shape profession habits of mind they were united and a deep love for music and many and many an evening how they play 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 indefined 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 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 and the chemistry that they have is thrown into relief because in this book there's a third character lieutenant james dylan i'm a big fan of dylan as a character not necessarily as a man but he's a great character because steven and dylan had been involved in the revolt of the united irishmen so this was the secret society revolutionary brotherhood really that was sort of fighting for irish independence in 1798 with french aid and they were bloodily put down 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 for now for private persons alone dylan has taken it very differently though dylan is brooding he is dark steven says dylan is 10 octaves lower down and in a darker key lovely writing 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 onto 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 he believes in his duty as a naval officer but of course he like like Stephen he had this other side to him which was an Irish revolutionary 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 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 honour in their lives could condemn him out of hand that's really astute i think totally i agree it's but such psychological insight 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 and he comes to focus all of his hatred and his resentment on jack albury you know jack albury's 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 yeah he loves a toasted cheese uh yeah he does um 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 his 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 yeah and each of them has to choose a persona the part that he plays on board the ship Jack has to do that when he boards the ship, doesn't he, as captain?

1:11:31Yes, 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.

1:11:48Dominic 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 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 sort of thing there's that bit in the film when there's a young lieutenant and he actually ends up um throwing himself off board eventually i think he's known as the jonah but the crew can't stand him because he starts trying to be one of them yes seeing their songs and jack tries to explain to him that they this unsettles them yes exactly right exactly so they talk about this don't they i think it's a really nice passage when steven and jack talk about this over coffee they're talking about their identity the 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 it's this idea of different men working together for a common goal yeah if you'll forgive me from being massively self-indulgent to allude to a book from later in the series there is you know that so that editor yes he flew home with book 11 the reverse yes 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'm going to shame myself now i read this scene and i was like a massive wreck and having googled i'm pleased to see having read the uh patrick abbond reddit thread that loads of other people feel the same so you know you you mentioned cochran had been framed yes stock exchange Jack has the same thing.

1:13:46Dominic Sandbrook: This is a big spoiler, so people should stop listening if they are really going to read all 11 books. But remain listening if you'd like to see Dominic cry. Yeah, thanks, Sammy. So Jack is framed for manipulating the stock market. There's a politically biased trial who's led out to the pillory. And people are going to throw, you know, rotten vegetables or whatever. Oh, I have to say, you know, knowing Jack as I now do. Yeah. That's hard to hear. 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 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 stephen of course mawatt dundas parker rowan williamson hervey and men from long long ago men he could scarcely name left helens and commanders putting their promotion at risk midshipmen and masters mates their commissions warrant officers their advancement god i was worried i wasn't going to get through that i i I've never seen you.

1:15:10Genuinely.

1:15:11Dominic Sandbrook: So he's forced into the pillory. And then one of them shouts, off hats. And with one movement, hundreds of broad brim 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. You'd be a terrible person if you had anything cynical to say to that. That's wonderful. I like to think, 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. Your producers from the rest is history in the book club. We'll all turn off and pull off our tarpaulins and give you a hearty cheer.

1:15:59So 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.

1:16:14Dominic Sandbrook: Okay. As the captain and commander of our beloved Man O' War, the book club, I shall go first. I knew that was coming. 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 favourite pudding is called a spotted dog. What's in that? 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. 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 identity crisis, his brooding darkness.

1:16:51I think it's an important balancer. There's nothing cliched in the characterisations. Maturin 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 the fact that he used these archaic words like commodious and stuff like that. And all of this makes it quite comforting. And I did feel its absence once I was done with it, I have to say. And I actually think the ending, you know, James Dillon's Redemption and so far as he needs it. Yeah. The ending was well done.

1:17:26I 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 yes yeah they hold something back there's a restraint to it but I found it quite hard to get into particularly the beginning the endless lectures on main masts 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 and it's drama and it's emotional drama and it's emotional payouts. So I missed that a little bit.

1:18:00So I was going to give it a six, but I'm now going to give it a seven. You've persuaded me.

1:18:06Dominic Sandbrook: I think that's quite low. Although actually I'm going to give it eight. That's one mark above mine. I know, 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 twelve 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 I didn't find it that funny I have to say there's more eccentricity in the later books there's more kind of mad things that happen to them the relationship between jack and steven 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 yeah but in later books there are so there's jack's wife there is also diana villiers who um is a brilliant character who steven ends up falling in love with and has this very turbulent relationship with diana aren't they love rivals at one point 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 really 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 we'll be dedicating the rest of the year to master and commander we might come back to him I mean we might come back to it i think it would be fun to come back to it yeah so tabby tell us about the delights to come what's coming up so we have to kill a mockingbird by harper lee tinker taylor soldier spy by john le carrey test the d 'urbervilles by thomas hardy and dune by frank herbert well i'm off to have some spotted dog bye tabby bye everybody bye

1:20:12We are getting a statement from Melton 10 on that flight with 350 passengers on board.

1:20:21Dominic Sandbrook: The great game. Strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. The man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. You've got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!

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1:21:38Dominic Sandbrook: Bear Hunt Available now wherever you get your podcasts.