Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
The same tantalizing guile and sublime skill. . . . [The series is] reinforced in its claim to be one of the major literary works of this century. . . . Only two other writers that this reviewer can think of have each created an entire, discrete and compelling world, a totally believable entity which one might wish to inhabit, and they are Joyce and Proust. It is not pretentious to place Patrick O'Brian in the first canon of literature.