Author of the Hornblower series of naval adventure books set in the Royal Navy in the early 1800s. Also wrote Death to the French, The Gun (about the Peninsular Wars), Sink the Bismarck! (about a World War II naval battle to sink the German battleship, later made into a film), and The African Queen, probably his most famous work (though only as a film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. Worked as a screenwriter, including adapting his own fiction to the screen.