Master and Commander

Set sail for the read of your life …

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. Now these evocative stories are being re-issued in paperback by Harper Perennial with stunning new jackets.

‘Master and Commander’ is the first of Patrick O’Brian’s now famous Aubrey/Maturin novels, regarded by many as the greatest series of historical novels ever written.

Establishing the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey RN and Stephen Maturin, who becomes his secretive ship’s surgeon and an intelligence agent, ‘Master and Commander’ contains all the action and excitement of a historical novel whilst displaying the qualities which have put O’Brian far ahead of any of his competitors: his evocative depiction of life aboard a Nelsonic man-of-war, of weaponry, food, conversation and ambience, and of the landscape and life on the high seas.

This brilliant historical novel marked the début of a writer who grew into one of our greatest novelists, the author of what Alan Judd, writing in the Sunday Times, has described as ‘the most significant extended story since Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time’.