- Patrick O’Brian, Read by Robert Hardy

Aubrey-Maturin - The Surgeon’s Mate (Aubrey-Maturin, Book 7): Abridged edition

By Patrick O’Brian, Read by Robert Hardy
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Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely hailed as the greatest series of historical novels ever written.

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin are ordered home by despatch vessel to bring the news of their latest victory to the government. But Maturin is a marked man for the havoc he has wrought in the French intelligence network in the New World, and the attentions of two privateers soon become menacing.

The chase that follows through the fogs and shallows of the Grand Banks is as thrilling, as tense and as unexpected in its culmination as anything Patrick O’Brian has written. Then, among other things, follows a shipwreck and a particularly sinister internment in the notorious Temple Prison in Paris. Once again, the tigerish and fascinating Diana Villiers redresses the balance in this man’s world of seamanship and war.

Author: Patrick O’Brian
Format: Other (A Format)
Release Date: 01 Dec 1997
Pages: None
ISBN: 978-0-00-105471-4
Price: £9.16 (Export Price) , £10.99, €14.45
Detailed Edition: Abridged edition
Patrick O’Brian, until his death in 2000, was one of our greatest contemporary novelists. He is the author of the acclaimed Aubrey–Maturin tales and the biographer of Joseph Banks and Picasso. He is the author of many other books including Testimonies, and his Collected Short Stories. In 1995 he was the first recipient of the Heywood Hill Prize for a lifetime’s contribution to literature. In the same year he was awarded the CBE. In 1997 he received an honorary doctorate of letters from Trinity College, Dublin. He lived for many years in South West France and he died in Dublin in January 2000.

”'stirring stuff… Hearty Robert Hardy reads with gusto and obvious enjoyment.” - Literary Review February 1998

'I never enjoyed a novel about the sea more. It is not only that the author describes the handling of a ship of 1800 with an accuracy that is as comprehensible as it is detailed, a remarkable feat in itself. Mr O'Brian's three chief characters are drawn with no less depth of sympathy than the vessels he describes, a rare achievement save in the greatest writers of this genre. It deserves the widest readership.' Irish Times -