Editing Patrick O'Brian (section)

===Media exposure and controversy in his final years===
O'Brian protected his privacy fiercely and was usually reluctant to reveal any details about his private life or past, preferring to include no biographical details on his book jackets and supplying only a minimum of personal information when pressed to do so.<ref name="Tolstoy" /> For many years reviewers and journalists presumed he was Irish,<ref>For example, [[Lord Dunsany]] referred to ''The Last Pool'' as "this charming book by an Irish sportsman" in a 1950 ''[[The Observer|Observer]]'' review (Tolstoy, 324), and [[William Waldegrave, Baron Waldegrave of North Hill|William Waldegrave]], reviewing ''The Wine-Dark Sea'' in 1993, was still referring to O'Brian's supposed "Irish, French and English childhood" (William Waldegrave, ''Patrick O'Brian'', reprinted in Patrick O'Brian, ''The Reverse of the Medal'', HarperCollins reprinted 2003)</ref> and he took no steps to correct the impression. One interviewer, Mark Horowitz, described the man in his late seventies as "a compact, austere gentleman.&nbsp;... his pale, watchful eyes are clear and alert."<ref name=Horowitz /> He is polite, formal, and erudite in conversation, an erudition that Horowitz said could be intimidating. He learned from those who worked with O'Brian that the erudition did not go unnoticed, while they remained friends.

Richard Ollard, a [[naval historian]], calls this particular habit "blowing people out of the game." Ollard, who edited the early Aubrey–Maturin novels, urged O'Brian to tone down the most obscure allusions, though the books remain crammed with Latin tags, antiquated [[medical terminology]] and an endless stream of marvellous-sounding but impenetrable naval jargon. "Like many who have struggled themselves", Ollard said of his friend, "he thought others should struggle, too." One longtime acquaintance put it more bluntly: "Patrick can be a bit of a snob, socially and intellectually."<ref name=Horowitz />

In 1998, a [[BBC]] documentary and an [[Investigative journalism|exposé]] in ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]''<ref name="Telegraph Fenton">{{cite web |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1999/10/24/nobr24.html |title=The Secret Life of Patrick O'Brian |last=Fenton |first=Ben |date=24 October 1999 |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |access-date=26 August 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060105221749/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=%2Farchive%2F1999%2F10%2F24%2Fnobr24.html |archive-date=5 January 2006 }}</ref> made public the facts of his ancestry, original name and first marriage, provoking considerable critical media comment. In his biography of O'Brian,<ref name="Tolstoy" /> Nikolai Tolstoy claims to give a more accurate and balanced account of his late stepfather's character, actions and motives, particularly in respect of his first marriage and family.

[[John Lanchester]] in reviewing Tolstoy's book, says "The last few years have been disheartening for Patrick O'Brian's many fans."<ref name=Lanchester>{{cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3626812/Remember-him-as-a-writer.html |title=Remember him as a writer |date=9 November 2004 |last=Lanchester |first=John |newspaper=The Telegraph |access-date=4 June 2015}}</ref> He does not find the arguments altogether persuasive, and with access to documents that Dean King never saw, Tolstoy "gives a portrait of a man who is cold, bullying, isolated, snobbish and super-sensitive."<ref name=Lanchester /> Lanchester closes by saying "Let's agree, we O'Brianists, to read the novels and forget everything else."  Veale, in reviewing King's book, says that "however judicious and well-grounded his [King's] speculation, he fails to crack his subject's protective shell. In the end, Aubrey and Maturin will have to thrive on their own—which is how the willfully enigmatic O'Brian most likely intended it."<ref name=Veale />

Horowitz interviewed O'Brian at his home in France in 1994: "Until recently, he refused all interviews. Those authors we know the least about, he says, are the ones we get in their purest form, like Homer. In ''Clarissa Oakes'' (published as ''The Truelove'' in the US), Stephen warns would-be interviewers that "question and answer is not a civilised form of conversation." O'Brian deflects direct inquiries about his private life, and when asked why he moved to the south of France after World War II, he stops and fixes his interrogator with a cold stare. "That seems to be getting rather close to a personal question," he says softly, walking on."<ref name=Horowitz />

At his death, many obituaries were published evaluating his work, particularly in the Aubrey–Maturin series, and the revelations of his biography prior to his marriage to Mary Wicksteed Tolstoy.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/library/books/010700obit-obrian.html |title=Patrick O'Brian, Whose 20 Sea Stories Won Him International Fame, Dies at 85 |last=Prial |first=Frank J |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=7 January 2000 |quote=Critics likened the O'Brian books to the sequential novels of Trollope and Anthony Powell, but the comparison that pleased O'Brian most was to Jane Austen. }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.salon.com/2000/01/13/o_brian/ |title= Patrick O'Brian: The author of the wildly popular 18th century seagoing saga created, out of his own life, a fiction nearly as elaborate |last=Williams |first=Ian |magazine=Salon |date=13 January 2000 |access-date=8 June 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://articles.philly.com/2000-01-08/news/25599146_1_aubrey-maturin-series-patrick-o-brian-stephen-maturin |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151231223144/http://articles.philly.com/2000-01-08/news/25599146_1_aubrey-maturin-series-patrick-o-brian-stephen-maturin |url-status=dead |archive-date=31 December 2015 |title=Novelist Patrick O'Brian, Writer of Naval Series, Dies |last=Romano |first=Carlin |newspaper=[[The Philadelphia Inquirer]] |date=8 January 2000 |access-date=8 June 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jan-08-mn-52007-story.html |title=Patrick O'Brian; British Master of the High-Seas Adventure Novel |last=Balzar |first=John |newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date= 8 January 2000 |access-date=8 June 2015}}</ref><ref name=IrishTimes>{{cite web |url=http://www.irishtimes.com/news/author-patrick-o-brian-dies-in-dublin-1.231499 |title=Author Patrick O'Brian Dies in Dublin |last=Holland |first=Kitty |newspaper=The Irish Times |date=7 January 2000 |access-date=8 June 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/jan/08/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries |title=Patrick O'Brian |last=Webb |first=W L |date=8 January 2000 |newspaper=The Guardian |access-date=8 June 2015}}</ref> Playwright [[David Mamet]] wrote an appreciation.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/library/books/011700mamet-writing.html |title=The Humble Genre Novel, Sometimes Full of Genius |last=Mamet |first=David |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=17 January 2000 |quote=His Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of today's putative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as Mark Twain has outlived Charles Reade. God bless the straightforward writer, and God bless those with the ability to amuse, provoke, surprise, shock, appall. |access-date=8 June 2015}}</ref> His American publisher, W. W. Norton, wrote an appreciation, mentioning their story with O'Brian, how pleased they were the three times he came to the US, in 1993, 1995 and in November 1999 only weeks before his death, and noting sales in the US alone of over three million copies.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.wwnorton.com/pob/bio.htm |title=Patrick O'Brian |publisher=W W Norton |year=2003 |access-date=8 June 2015}}</ref>