Talk:C. S. Forester

[Untitled]
This certainly cries out for further explication:
 * "Forester had a complicated early life, including imaginary parents and a secret marriage."

Ortolan88 03:01, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * You sure got that right, Ortolan88! Also, how his pen name is Forester and his son's name is Forester?  Are we in The Twilight Zone here? Spalding 00:29, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)


 * Yeah, can someone please dig into this. I read Forester's autobiography, where he had parents. Where did this imaginary parents thing come from? Seminumerical 23:45, 9 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I have gone back through both Forester's autobiography (good) and the biography of him written by his son (bad.) Neither says anything about "imaginary parents", so I'm assuming someone made it up.  I have removed the sentence. Fumblebruschi (talk) 23:56, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

--

I added a number of non-Hornblower works. Does anyone know if there is a Galapagos Island called "Resolution"? It seems to be fictious, but I'm not absolutely sure.

I used the included links, Amazon.com and IMDB.com to research the details. Henry Troup 17:41, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I see no mention of "Rifleman Dodd" among the listed works of the author. Is this an oversight or is there some other explanation? "Rifleman Dodd" is an obvious influence on Cornwell's "Sharpe" novels. It is, or was, also required reading during United States Marine Corps recruit training in recent years. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.44.129 (talk) 17:08, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Never mind! I answered my own question and will be adding the alternate title "Rifleman Dodd" to the short mention of "Death to the French". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.15.44.129 (talk) 17:13, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Dulwich
SLight change: I added Dulwich College aswell as Alleyns, as he attended both schools one after the other. (Dulwich 1915 -16) Alleyns before. BFS

Bernard Cornwell
In a memo to the Sharpe appreciation society published along with Sharpe's Prey, Cornwell writes this: "I knew what I wanted to write. It was going to be a land-based version of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower books."

I am adding a note in the notes section to reflect this. (If no one objects in the next few days that is.) Z07 00:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Book title
I just read a book called Sink the Bismarck! by this author. At the bottom of the cover, it says "originally published as The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck. This article references a book by this author entitled Hunting the Bismarck. Are these all the same book? 74.130.215.12 21:34, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck was the original English title.  It was published in the US as Hunting the Bismarck, then made into a movie calledSink the Bismarck!  After the movie came out, the book was re-issued as Sink the Bismarck!  Fumblebruschi 03:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Need more info on this author
I came here specifically to learn how it came to be that C. S. Forester had such an expansive knowledge of 19th century ships. He not only knows the terminology of the sailors and officers aboard these naval ships, he also seems to know the name of every part of the ship and every part of ship's life. I would have expected that he had spent some time aboard these ships to have such intimate knowledge of them.Trucker11 (talk) 12:27, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Was Forester merely a pen name?
Or did he ever change his name legally to Forester? I ask this because his son is John Forester (cyclist), but if Forester was only his father's literary pseudonym, I would expect his children to bear the surname Smith, or possibly Troughton Smith.

I raised this question back in 2009 at Talk:John Forester (cyclist), but it's received no response so far. Better luck here, perhaps. --  Jack of Oz   [your turn]  10:47, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

What Part Did Religion Play in his Life
Just read The Good Shepherd (at least I think it was that) and found it read like a bible or something from the Jehova's Watchtower. Bible like quotes throughout it really made it unbearable and unreadable. Only about half way through did it make reference to the fact that the ship's captain (the protaganist) was religious. I also remembered that this was similar in some other book of his but couldn't remember which.

On another note the fact that some of his books were written as "propoganda" is blatantly obvious when reading them. Even Hunting the Bismark which was written in 1959 is written like some propoganda piece. A Taxed Mind (talk) 10:47, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * His son, John Forester, wrote that his father, like himself, was an atheist. Lippard (talk) 19:34, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Influenced is there in the code but not on the page
If you look on the edit page it has a list of people he influenced but they're not showing up in the actual article. Can anyone fix this? --Liquidmetalrob (talk) 23:31, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Bad sentence?
In 1947, he married a woman named Dorothy Foster.

This seems, at the least, a rather disrespectful comment. -- Michael K Smith Talk 20:28, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Cod Wars mention of trawler C.S. Forester
'...one of the largest wet fish stern trawlers in the British fleet, C.S. Forester, which had been fishing inside the 12 nmi limit, was shelled and captured by the Icelandic gunboat V/s Þór'' after a 100-mile-long pursuit. C. S. Forester was shelled with non-explosive ammunition after repeated warnings.'''

This is from the Cod Wars mention of trawler C.S. Forester, but I am unsure where to place it in this article. Can someone do it?--DThomsen8 (talk) 20:49, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Speculation
The Early Years section states that "At Alleyn's he may have been a contemporary of E. S. Hornblower, who died on active service with the Canadian Infantry in 1917. It is possible that as Cecil L. T. Smith and an Old Boy he would have been present at the unveiling of the War Memorial panels which are still on display where he would have read the name 'Hornblower'." I've removed this; Without a source it is just idle speculation, which is not what we are here for. And, he may just as easily have come across the name on a visit to Merseyside, which has a notable local architect and a pub of that name. Who knows? Swanny18 (talk) 16:54, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Non-sequitur
Hornblower's fictional feats were based on real events, but Forester wrote the body of the works carefully to avoid entanglements with real world history, so that Hornblower is always off on another mission when a great naval victory occurs during the Napoleonic Wars.
 * The first half of this statement does not explain the second half. Can you enlighten us? Valetude (talk) 16:04, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Edward Belcher and Horatio Howard Brenton
An anonymous user has added an uncited claim that Katherine Belcher had Sir Edward Belcher, R.N. admiral and author of the 1856 novel Horatio Howard Brenton, as a great uncle. Perhaps this comes from the blurb of the 2010 republication by Fireship Press at https://fireshippress.com/horatio-howard-brenton-a-novel-of-the-sea-post/ though this only vaguely implies a relationship and doesn't say "great uncle". Secondly, there's a related claim that Edward Belcher was in turn a cousin of the novelist Frederick Marryat. In fact Edward's sister Catherine (born 9 May 1806 https://ia800207.us.archive.org/29/items/belcherfamilyine00belc/belcherfamilyine00belc.pdf page 33, see especially footnote) married Frederick's brother Charles ( https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/42069 ) so they had no blood relationship. I'm removing the whole addition as it's both doubtful and of very marginal relevance. Jaa101 (talk) 04:46, 21 July 2022 (UTC)