C.S. Forester was born in 1899, the son of an English school-teacher. He cut his teeth on a series of military and naval novels before being offered a Hollywood screen-writing job to pen a pirate movie. However when that project went belly up, he turned to writing again with the first of the series that was to make him a worldwide name - THE HAPPY RETURN starring one Horatio Hornblower. He eventually died in 1966.