Nicholas Monsarrat abbandonò il diritto per dedicarsi alla scrittura, immergendosi in tematiche sociali e politiche. Le sue esperienze navali durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale plasmarono profondamente la sua successiva produzione letteraria, in particolare le sue acclamate storie di mare che ritraevano senza reticenze le dure realtà del servizio bellico. Successivamente, basandosi sui suoi incarichi diplomatici, esplorò le complessità dell'Africa coloniale britannica e le relazioni umane in quel contesto. La scrittura di Monsarrat si distingue per la rappresentazione realistica di circostanze difficili e l'acuta analisi di personaggi che affrontano avversità estreme.
Father Salvatore was a simple, lumbering priest, a kappillan serving the poor Valetta, when war came out of the blue skies to pound the island to dust. Now amid the catacombs discovered by a chance bomb, he cared for the flood of homeless, starving, frightened people who sought shelter from the death that fell unceasingly from the sky. His story, and the story of Malta, is told in superbly graphic pictures of six days during the siege. Each of those days brought forth from the kappillan a message of inspiration to keep them going - the legendary tales of six mighty events of Malta's history which shone through the centuries and gathered them together in a fervent belief in their survival.
This is Nicholas Monsarrat's final masterpiece, an epic tale of the sea and seafaring from the sixteenth century to near the end of the twentieth.Told from the point of view of Mathew Lawe, a young Devon sailor who is cursed after a spectacular act of cowardice to wander 'the wild waters till all the seas run dry', it is historical fiction but beset by real events. Monsarrat follows the great captains and naval adventurers from the Artic to the South Pacific. Lawe represents the spirit of maritime exploration and fortitude; his life is the thread stringing together a long history of nautical adventure.He finds himself mixed up with Drake and the Armada; sailing with Hudson in search of the North-West passage; a buccaneer under Sir Henry Morgan in the Caribbean; assisting Samuel Pepys with his responsibilities as Secretary to the Navy; at the side of Captain Cook as he transports General Wolf to the storming of Quebec, and then on to his death in the Pacific; serving in Nelson's household and then to the Nile, Naples and Trafalgar; working on a slaver from Liverpool to the Caribbean; press-ganged aboard the Shannon just before her duel with the American Chesapeake, exploring the Artic with Sir John Franklin; fighting in both world wars, including the action at Zebrugge and 'D' Day; before a final test with a tanker catching fire after the opening of the St.Lawrence Seaway - and much more besides!Under sail and steam, as Mathew's eternal existence progresses, the action-packed novel is both highly entertaining and instructive and has been widely acclaimed as a masterpiece.
