C. S. Forester was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith (1899–1966), an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of naval warfare. His most notable works are The African Queen and the eleven-book Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic era. His novels A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours were jointly awarded the 1938 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. He is also known for writing gritty psychological thrillers that took crime writing in a new direction as they portrayed ordinary people turning in desperation to crime. |