Loose Lips Sink Ships_ – is that there are no heroes and no villains in his books. The people are just trying to survive the war, and that makes it difficult for him to know which side is right. The best example of this in _Hornblower_ is between Hornblower and his friend Bracegirdle, when Bracegirdle becomes a spy. It is a serious issue for Hornblower that Bracegirdle is spying, but he is driven by his loyalty to Queen and country. Is Bracegirdle a villain or not? He starts out as a spy but later he does good things for Hornblower. Should he have continued as a spy? His first job is to turn in to the French captain the charts that reveal the safe position of the British fleet, but later he helps Hornblower to outwit the French. He also makes a lot of money off a book, which is useful. He also risks his life to help Hornblower when they are captured by the French. Hornblower decides to release Bracegirdle, because he has done good things for him. So the book shows that the villain is not always the character who is shooting at you with a musket – you don't necessarily know which side he is on. This is particularly important for the character of Hornblower, who often questions himself because of the terrible choices he has to make. Although many of his characters are complex, Hornblower is also a clear-cut person in some ways. He has a sort of innocence. The same applies to the way he deals with women. Hornblower doesn't really notice women – though the way he feels about one woman is important to the plot – and this makes the character a kind of male ideal. I think the most amazing aspect of his work is that the books are set at a time when it was difficult for a woman to have any influence on her own life. That was the case at the time when _Hornblower_ was written, and it was certainly the case when his first book was published in the 1950s. Even so, Hornblower shows some amazing female characters, such as Lady Barbara Wellesley in _The Happy Return_. Hornblower is also not afraid of death. He is not a character with a lot of life, but he never gives up. He can be quite negative in a number of ways, yet in the end he will always try and do his best, even though he has to compromise many things in order to do that. He's someone who really can't say no to things, but he won't say yes unless there are advantages to him. He can be quite stubborn and stubborn people tend not to give up easily, and they don't change their minds easily. These characteristics are true of all Hornblower's life, except for when he marries Maria. In the end, what comes out is a character who has a moral force. _The Happy Return_ is a story of loss and recovery, of loyalty and its meaning. It is a story of the power of love and loss. It's an important book, and perhaps the most important of Hornblower's books, though it is not exactly a happy story. What Hornblower is trying to say in this book is that if you have lost one person and you love that person, then that love will have to be a sort of memorial to them. You have to remember them in order to be happy. You don't stop loving them, but their loss marks you for life. If you have lost one person, you can still love the next person who comes along and marry him. It's a very sad but important book, but it also marks a break in the character of Hornblower. His marriage is a very negative thing for him in the book. He has been so close to his father, then he loses him, and that turns him away from any kind of marriage to Maria. It's an important part of his life, and it shapes him very deeply. The book is a sad one, and the story is about what happens when you lose someone you love. In the end, he accepts his loss and begins to live a better life. He gets on with his life, and accepts the consequences of his decisions. _Hornblower_ starts with a funeral. It's a very important scene – a very sad scene in which everybody is grieving and crying. That's a kind of summary of the story and its starting point. The idea of a funeral is used as a metaphor for the beginning of the book. _Hornblower_ is not really a happy book, but it's a moving book and is full of passion. It's a deeply passionate book, but not an easy read. You can't say, 'Let's read _Hornblower_ ,' but instead it has to be discovered. It's a book that has something to say – a book that is an exploration of moral issues. I don't think Hornblower's character is easy to classify. You can call him a hero or a villain, but this is the character I've tried to capture in the book. You might look at him as a soldier, but he is not a soldier really – that doesn't come across in the books. He has all the instincts of a soldier, but he is not in the military service. There are moments when he is very professional in the books and that's when he becomes a captain in the Royal Navy, but he is not someone who fights battles or works on a ship. He becomes a captain because of his cleverness – he does very good things for the British government, and he eventually goes on to become a naval minister. The idea of a naval minister would have been completely alien to the nineteenth century. It shows what is necessary for the time – but it's a very hard thing to do, to become a naval minister. Hornblower's job is to use his connections to put the right people into high positions in the navy. He is constantly making connections and he is constantly making choices – that is what the characters are always doing in _Hornblower_. As a naval minister he is constantly choosing the right things to do for the country, and that requires a great deal of moral force. That's what makes Hornblower interesting – he is always very moral. He is always very moral, but his morality is constantly tested and it shows in the books. He has to be moral in order to be successful, but he does have many flaws as well. His morality sometimes causes him problems and he is sometimes immoral, but he is always trying to do the right thing. He has the ability to be ruthless. He has the ability to do all the things that are necessary to win the war. He is not a character who wants to risk his life. He is not prepared to do any more than he has to do – to keep himself out of danger, but not his men. He is constantly forced to make choices, and he often does the wrong things for the right reasons – as long as they are not immoral things. There is an example of this in the way he treats women. He does make terrible mistakes when he treats women badly, but you have to remember that his views about the world come from a very old-fashioned background. He's Victorian in some ways, but he's also more modern than his ancestors, even though he is often very stubborn in doing the wrong thing. He can be quite ruthless in what he does to people, and he would rather do the wrong thing than do something that shows weakness. That's the kind of choice he makes. I would not classify the _Hornblower_ books as thrillers. There are thrilling bits in them, but there is a much larger question about the world that's being presented. Trevor is a very interesting person. He is someone who comes from an old, old family who are not going to be there forever. He is the last of his generation. That is perhaps why he is an idealist in a sense, because he's always thinking about the future. He is interested in what's going to happen to him when his father dies. That might seem strange, but he is interested in death and mortality in a way that someone who has no particular need to worry about death might not be. There are things that can be done for him, but he feels the absence of someone very close. Even though he has lost his father, it is as though he has lost a brother. He misses that person, and what he has done with his life is not really adequate, in his view. That's something that you could only know if you'd had the same background as Trevor Hornblower. There is a great deal of Trevor in Hornblower. I think his experiences are completely different, and yet there are some important similarities. The sense of loss that he has in _The Happy Return_ is very important. It's a book about death, but also about how someone deals with their own loss and the importance of holding on to the things that really mean something to them. It's a book about the need to keep hold of the people who love you, even if they are far away. It's a book about the need to remember people and how important that is. In the end he reaches a place in his life where he realises he has to go on and he has to be thankful for what he has been given – not only the people he's been given, but the experiences that he has been given. He is no longer a child, but is a man who makes his own decisions about what he does. I think Hornblower