Patrick O'Brian translated works from French to English, and wrote biographies of Joseph Banks and Picasso.
24 Facts About Patrick O'Brian
2.
The eighth of nine children, Patrick O'Brian lost his mother at the age of four, and his biographers describe a fairly isolated childhood, limited by poverty, with sporadic schooling, at St Marylebone Grammar School from 1924 to 1926, while living in Putney, and then at Lewes Grammar School, from September 1926 to July 1929, after the family moved to Lewes, East Sussex, but with intervals at home with his father and stepmother Zoe Center.
3.
Patrick O'Brian published his first novel at age 15, Caesar: The Life Story of a Panda Leopard, with help from his father.
4.
Patrick O'Brian worked as an ambulance driver, and he stated that he worked in intelligence in the Political Intelligence Department.
5.
Dean King has said Patrick O'Brian was actively involved in intelligence work and perhaps special operations overseas during the war.
6.
Nikolai Tolstoy, stepson through Patrick O'Brian's marriage to Mary, disputes that account, confirming only that Patrick O'Brian worked as a volunteer ambulance driver during the Blitz when he met Mary, the separated wife of Russian-born nobleman and lawyer Count Dimitri Tolstoy.
7.
Patrick O'Brian pursued his interest in natural history; he fished, went birdwatching, and followed the local hunt.
8.
Patrick O'Brian protected his privacy fiercely and was usually reluctant to reveal any details about his private life or past, preferring to include no biographical details on his book jackets and supplying only a minimum of personal information when pressed to do so.
9.
Patrick O'Brian learned from those who worked with O'Brian that the erudition did not go unnoticed, while they remained friends.
10.
Patrick O'Brian's body was returned to Collioure, where he is buried next to his wife.
11.
The "Amis of Patrick O'Brian" association, based in Collioure, has been entrusted with the contents of his writing space, including his books and papers, as well as his writing desk, pens and ink.
12.
Patrick O'Brian published very little under his original name of Russ during World War II, and nothing after 1940.
13.
Patrick O'Brian returned to writing after the war when he moved to rural Wales.
14.
Patrick O'Brian became an established translator of French works into English.
15.
Dirk Kempthorne and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who invited Patrick O'Brian to attend a session of the high court.
16.
Shortly before his last completed novel was published in October 1999, Patrick O'Brian wrote an article for a series of the best in the millennium ending, titled "Full Nelson", choosing for his topic Admiral Nelson's victory in the Battle of the Nile in 1798.
17.
Patrick O'Brian was a respected translator, responsible for more than 30 translations from the French into English, including Henri Charriere's Papillon and Banco: The further adventures of Papillon, Jean Lacouture's biography of Charles de Gaulle, as well as many of Simone de Beauvoir's later works.
18.
Patrick O'Brian wrote detailed biographies of Sir Joseph Banks, an English naturalist who took part in Cook's first voyage, and Pablo Picasso.
19.
Patrick O'Brian's biography of Picasso is a massive and comprehensive study of the artist.
20.
Picasso and Patrick O'Brian both lived in the French village of Collioure and became acquainted there.
21.
Patrick O'Brian received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin and a CBE in 1997.
22.
Patrick O'Brian claimed that he wrote "like a Christian, with ink and quill"; Mary was his first reader and typed his manuscripts "pretty" for the publisher.
23.
Patrick O'Brian handwrote all his books and stories, shunning both typewriter and word processor.
24.
Tolstoy's two-volume biography, Patrick O'Brian: The Making of the Novelist and Patrick O'Brian: A Very Private Life make use of material from the Russ and Tolstoy families and sources, including O'Brian's personal papers and library which Tolstoy inherited on O'Brian's death.