Nikolai Tolstoy - Patrick O’Brian - A Very Private Life

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An intimate portrait of Patrick O’Brian, written by his stepson Nikolai Tolstoy. Patrick O’Brian was one of the greatest British novelists of the twentieth century, securing his place in literary history with the bestselling Aubrey–Maturin series, books that have sold millions of copies worldwide and been hailed as the best historical fiction of all time. An exquisite novelist, translator and biographer, O’Brian moved in 1949 to Collioure in the south of France, where he led a secluded life with his wife Mary and wrote all his major works. The twenty books that make up the beloved Aubrey–Maturin series earned O’Brian the epithet ‘Jane Austen at sea’ for their authentic depiction of Nelson’s navy, and the relationship between Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend and ship’s surgeon Stephen Maturin. Outside his triumphant popularity in fiction, O’Brian also wrote erudite biographies of both Pablo Picasso and Joseph Banks, as well as publishing translations of Simone de Beauvoir and Henri Charrière. In A Very Private Life, Nikolai Tolstoy draws upon his close relationship with his stepfather, as well as his notebooks, letters and photographs, to capture a highly researched but intimate account of those fifty years in Collioure that were the richest of O’Brian’s writing life. With warm and honest reflection, this biography gives insight into the genius of the little-known man behind the much-loved writing. Tolstoy also tells how, through a sad irony, unjust attacks on O’Brian’s private life destroyed much of the happiness he had gained from his achievement just as his literary career attained greater acclaim.

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PATRICK O’BRIAN

A Very Private Life

Nikolai Tolstoy

Copyright CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Preface I - фото 1

Copyright CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Preface I Collioure and Three Bear Witness II The Catalans III New Home and New Family IV Voyages of Adventure V In the Doldrums VI A Family Man VII Master and Commander VIII The Green Isle Calls IX Pablo Ruiz Picasso X Shifting Currents XI Muddied Waters XII Travails of Existence XIII Family Travails XIV The Sunlit Uplands XV Epinician Acclaims XVI Triumph and Tragedy XVII Melmoth the Wanderer Envoi Appendix A: Collioure: History and Landscape Appendix B: Patrick and His First Wife Elizabeth Appendix C: Patrick’s Sailing Footnotes Notes Index Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Nikolai Tolstoy About the Publisher

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.com

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019

Copyright © Nikolai Tolstoy 2019

Cover design by Heike Schüssler

Cover photograph © Steve Pyke / Getty Images

Nikolai Tolstoy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All photographs courtesy of the author

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008350581

Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008350604

Version: 2019-09-30

Dedication CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Preface I Collioure and Three Bear Witness II The Catalans III New Home and New Family IV Voyages of Adventure V In the Doldrums VI A Family Man VII Master and Commander VIII The Green Isle Calls IX Pablo Ruiz Picasso X Shifting Currents XI Muddied Waters XII Travails of Existence XIII Family Travails XIV The Sunlit Uplands XV Epinician Acclaims XVI Triumph and Tragedy XVII Melmoth the Wanderer Envoi Appendix A: Collioure: History and Landscape Appendix B: Patrick and His First Wife Elizabeth Appendix C: Patrick’s Sailing Footnotes Notes Index Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Nikolai Tolstoy About the Publisher

I dedicate this book to my late cousin Adrian Slack and his sister Julia, the dearest of friends as well as closest of relatives since those distant days of childhood at Appledore beside the Severn Sea.

At home in the cloister of Correch d’en Baus

Epigraph CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Preface I Collioure and Three Bear Witness II The Catalans III New Home and New Family IV Voyages of Adventure V In the Doldrums VI A Family Man VII Master and Commander VIII The Green Isle Calls IX Pablo Ruiz Picasso X Shifting Currents XI Muddied Waters XII Travails of Existence XIII Family Travails XIV The Sunlit Uplands XV Epinician Acclaims XVI Triumph and Tragedy XVII Melmoth the Wanderer Envoi Appendix A: Collioure: History and Landscape Appendix B: Patrick and His First Wife Elizabeth Appendix C: Patrick’s Sailing Footnotes Notes Index Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Nikolai Tolstoy About the Publisher

Indeed I cannot conceive a more perfect mode of writing any man’s life, than not only relating all the most important events of it in their order, but interweaving what he privately wrote, and said, and thought; by which mankind are enabled as it were to see him live, and to ‘live o’er each scene’ with him, as he actually advanced through the several stages of his life .

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (London, 1793), i, p. 6

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page PATRICK O’BRIAN A Very Private Life Nikolai Tolstoy

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Preface

I Collioure and Three Bear Witness

II The Catalans

III New Home and New Family

IV Voyages of Adventure

V In the Doldrums

VI A Family Man

VII Master and Commander

VIII The Green Isle Calls

IX Pablo Ruiz Picasso

X Shifting Currents

XI Muddied Waters

XII Travails of Existence

XIII Family Travails

XIV The Sunlit Uplands

XV Epinician Acclaims

XVI Triumph and Tragedy

XVII Melmoth the Wanderer

Envoi

Appendix A: Collioure: History and Landscape

Appendix B: Patrick and His First Wife Elizabeth

Appendix C: Patrick’s Sailing

Footnotes

Notes

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Nikolai Tolstoy

About the Publisher

Preface CONTENTS Cover Title Page PATRICK O’BRIAN A Very Private Life Nikolai Tolstoy Copyright Dedication Epigraph Preface I Collioure and Three Bear Witness II The Catalans III New Home and New Family IV Voyages of Adventure V In the Doldrums VI A Family Man VII Master and Commander VIII The Green Isle Calls IX Pablo Ruiz Picasso X Shifting Currents XI Muddied Waters XII Travails of Existence XIII Family Travails XIV The Sunlit Uplands XV Epinician Acclaims XVI Triumph and Tragedy XVII Melmoth the Wanderer Envoi Appendix A: Collioure: History and Landscape Appendix B: Patrick and His First Wife Elizabeth Appendix C: Patrick’s Sailing Footnotes Notes Index Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Nikolai Tolstoy About the Publisher

A fortnight after Patrick O’Brian’s death, the playwright David Mamet wrote of his literary achievement:

Recently I put down O’Brian’s sea novel ‘The Ionian Mission’ and said to my wife, ‘This fellow has created characters and stories that are part of my life.’

She said: ‘Write him a letter. He’s in his 80s. Write him and thank him. And when you are in England, look him up, go tell him.

‘How wonderful,’ she said, ‘to be alive, when he is still alive. Imagine living in the 1890s and being able to converse with Conan Doyle.’

Mamet promptly rehearsed the eulogium with which he would address his literary hero, and began preparing a letter of introduction at his breakfast table. Then, glancing at the newspaper beside him, he saw to his dismay an announcement of the melancholy news of Patrick’s death. [1] Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

I have no doubt that Patrick would have been delighted by such praise from his acclaimed fellow writer, and that had my mother still been alive she would have inserted the letter in her box-file ‘Valuable Fans and very good reviews’. My hope is that, while nothing can quite replace a face-to-face conversation, this book may compensate by enabling Mamet and others of Patrick’s worldwide legion of admirers to learn much more of his life and personality than might have been obtained from any interview with the famously reclusive writer.

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