Lieutenant Hornblower

"I think he wrote the series out of order. He wrote some and then went back to fill in the details of the ones before. I read them in their chronological order because I felt like that was the best way to get a sense of the characters. I’ve chosen the second one in the series. I like Lieutenant Hornblower because it’s the only book in the series that tells the story not from Hornblower’s perspective, but from Bush’s. You see the main character through someone else’s eyes. That’s nice to see, because, again, like Jack and Stephen, they don’t get on that well, to start with. Hornblower is quite unconventional in how he goes about his career, whereas Bush is more by the book. They clash, to begin with, and have different styles of leadership. But then they come to be really loyal to each other and have a firm friendship. As I said, that’s what I like about the genre, those shared experiences and the loyalties: between the officers, between the crew and between the officers and the crew. I know that some people don’t get on so much with Hornblower’s perspective. He can be quite downbeat at times. He’s very self-deprecating and quite self-pitying. But I like it because with the naval genre, the settings can overwhelm the characters. It can be a bit dry: it’s easy to get lost in the ships and the seafaring and the naval history. So I like that he has a strong narrative voice in it. It’s a bit more emotional than some more traditional Age-of-Sail books. I actually read the books because I watched the TV series, which I really liked. I think it’s stronger than the books. It’s such a good example of Age-of-Sail stories. It’s really fun, really adventurous, but with those nice character friendships throughout it as well. There are a lot. There’s also the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell, which is not naval fiction, but it’s set at the same time on land. I think people just went through a phase in the 20th century, into the start of the 21st, where there was lots of Napoleonic stuff. I like it because it has a big reputation around it, and it has all these different tropes and stereotypes. I like exploring that and looking beyond the tropes and seeing what it might actually have been like—how people felt the weight of those expectations on them. But I don’t really know why it’s got such a broad appeal. It’s a really fun genre, and there’s lots I like about it—all the adventure and the history. But even the naval fiction series that are coming out now feel quite traditional. They were predominantly male crews and male officers, but there are basically no queer characters at all. I wanted to write the things that I loved about the genre, just from a different perspective and a different voice. Because the officers wouldn’t just be experiencing the big expectations upon them of their career and of the ships and of leadership, they’d also be experiencing not really fitting in with the world and with society because of their sexual orientation. I thought that would be interesting to explore, especially on ships where there’s nowhere to hide. People have an idea that because they’re not reading about these voices in history, that they didn’t exist. But given the number of ships that there were and the number of officers and crew, it’s statistically impossible for them all to be straight. Again, it’s one that you can pick up no matter where you are in the series, but it works better if you start from the beginning, so you get a sense of the characters and their relationships. Leeward is about Captain Nightingale, who is an officer in the Royal Navy at the turn of the 19th century, and experiences quite a traumatic event at the Battle of the Nile. He nearly loses his ship, and his lieutenant, who he secretly had feelings for, is killed. He takes a period of leave from the Navy, but feels it’s his duty to come back and try and get back on his feet. So he accepts a commission on a ship out in the Caribbean, which has to hunt down another ship that has mutinied and bring the mutineers to justice. Lieutenant Courtney is also on board the ship. He’s the opposite of Nightingale to start with. He’s really popular with the men and really confident in himself and about his decisions. He’s quite hot-headed as well. But they come together in the end, because they have that uniting goal of finding the ship and also of serving in the Navy. The next book, The Devil to Pay , takes Courtney’s perspective. It takes place in the brief peace between the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He’s living on the Isle of Wight, and is called back to find another ship which has gone missing on the way to Malta to negotiate some of the terms of the peace. Then A Merciful Sea is from both of their perspectives. Nightingale’s story is set on the Isle of Wight, where he’s caught in the middle of a clash between a horrible lieutenant and the people who live there. Courtney is with Nelson’s fleet and the story follows the build-up to the Battle of Trafalgar. That’s the basic plots of all three of them. Through the books, Nightingale and Courtney have this romantic partnership, so it’s half naval fiction and half about their relationship and how they negotiate it on the ships, and in society as well."