C. S. Forester (Cecil Scott Forester) (Cecil Lewis Troughton Smith) Biography

British writer, born in Egypt; he studied medicine at Guy's Hospital, London. He is remembered as the creator of Horatio Hornblower, who appeared in The Happy Return (1937), the first of a long series of novels set in the Napoleonic Wars, outlining the career of an introspective naval officer, not always fortunate and seldom truly happy, who hates cruelty and loves the Navy, and who rises in rank to Admiral and eventually becomes Lord Hornblower. The Hornblower stories were collected in The Hornblower Companion (1964). Twenty other novels included Brown on Resolution (1929); The Gun (1933), set in the Peninsular War; The African Queen (1935); The General (1936); The Captain from Connecticut (1941); The Ship (1943), a story of the Second World War; and The Sky and the Forest (1948). Films were made of several of the Hornblower stories and of The African Queen, which became a classic film with Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart.