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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]

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.

This book covers the latter part of Patrick O’Brian’s life, from the moment of his and my mother’s arrival at Collioure in the south of France in the autumn of 1949. It is the period during which he wrote all his major works. Since my mother’s death twenty years ago, I remain the sole intimate observer of Patrick’s astonishing career from impoverished and little-known writer in 1955, when I first met him, until his death at the height of his international fame at the turn of the millennium forty-five years later. Nevertheless, it never occurred to me at any point during his lifetime to compile his biography – not least because I was well aware of his detestation of inquisitive enquiries into his private life.

My unanticipated decision to undertake the task began in the aftermath of Patrick’s death at the beginning of the year 2000. I was witness to the acute distress caused him by the imminent appearance of an unauthorized biography.[fn1] My dismay was briefly allayed by its publication soon afterwards, when I was asked to review it. My initial impression was that the book appeared largely harmless. Knowing little at the time about Patrick’s early life, and his relationship with his first wife Elizabeth and son Richard, I felt I had no reason not to accept the author’s account of Patrick’s life before I knew him as broadly accurate, and besides dismissed it as of little relevance to his reputation as a writer.

What I was not prepared for, however, was the startling extent to which a small but vociferous coterie of journalists and reviewers eagerly swallowed everything related in the book that could be interpreted as detrimental to Patrick’s reputation, regardless of its truth – or in many instances even likelihood.[fn2] Regrettably, it was in some of the more meretricious cases that his detractors arranged for their pieces to be posted on the internet for futurity.

Before long it occurred to me that I was uniquely placed to provide a more balanced and credible picture. Not only had I known Patrick intimately throughout the greater part of his life,[fn3] but in addition I possess almost all his personal papers, extending from his appearance in a pram at the age of one to his final melancholy sojourn in Dublin. This includes such invaluable sources as my mother’s and his own diaries covering every day of the greater part of the period 1945 to 1999, my mother’s financial accounts from 1945 to 1997, Patrick’s correspondence with his literary agents, publishers and admirers, manuscripts of many of his unpublished works, recorded interviews with his friends and family, extensive personal notes, preliminary drafts of his novels, his precious library, and much else. In addition, I knew intimately many of his and my mother’s friends inhabiting Collioure or visiting them there, almost all of whom are now sadly dead. However, I soon realized that, much more significantly than a desire to refute the damaging effect of media vilification, a biography based on authentic evidence would constitute a remarkable chronicle of love, endeavour, and in some ways unique triumph over daunting odds. In addition it would reveal much of the genesis and inspiration of his admired works of fiction and biography, which continue to enthral millions of readers around the world.

For the rest, it is my hope that this biography will enable readers to arrive at judgements based on evidence, rather than efflorescent imagination. In my experience, truth tends to be vastly more interesting than the most lurid of conjectures. I conclude with an assurance that I have suppressed nothing material from memories extending over five decades and the extensive archive in my possession, save one matter of trifling consequence which for the present I feel it proper to withhold.

Nikolai Tolstoy, 2019