Beasts Royal: Twelve Tales of Adventure

O’Brian, Patrick

ISBN 10: 000815466X ISBN 13: 9780008154660

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2015

Synopsis

Beasts Royal is the second book written by Patrick O’Brian – made available, at last, for the first time since the 1930s and beautifully repackaged.

Published when Patrick O’Brian was just nineteen, this is the enchanting, often bloodthirsty collection of twelve tales of animal adventure that would be published in 1934 as the author’s second book. His first, Caesar, had been published in 1930 and was an instant success, seeing O’Brian hailed as the ‘boy-Thoreau’. As with Caesar, Beasts Royal sheds fascinating light on the formation of the literary genius behind the Aubrey-Maturin series of historical adventure tales.

With the dry wit and unsentimental precision O’Brian would come to be loved for, we see the tragedies of ...

About this title

Review:

‘Both books are full of the fantasy that has made O’Brian’s seafaring yarns such a success. Like them, they are full of engaging adventures, curious lore, fond descriptions of food and scenes of battle... Caesar makes delightful, often hilarious reading... Hussein is more sophisticated. Here fully thirty years before Master and Commander was published is the unmistakable texture of O’Brian’s historical fiction. Hussein has it all: the immersion in another world, full of local colour, the delight in a specialised vocabulary, the relish of male camaraderie, travel, treasure and fighting.’
David Sexton, Evening Standard

‘O’Brian admirers can now appreciate another dimension to his writing’ Alex O’Connell, The Times

About the Author:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 000815466X
• ISBN 13: 9780008154660
• Binding: Audio CD