Aubrey–Maturin series Times" Best Seller list. These novels comprise the heart of the canon of an author often compared to Jane Austen, C. S. Forester and other British authors central to the English literature canon. The 2003 film "" took material from books in this series, notably "Master and Commander", "HMS Surprise", "The Letter of Marque", "The Fortune of War", and particularly "The Far Side of the World". Russell Crowe played the role of Jack Aubrey, and Paul Bettany that of Stephen Maturin. Patrick O'Brian's "The Golden Ocean" (1956) and "The Unknown Shore" (1959) both depict fictional pairs of young men, loosely
The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. It was published in 2008 (by Picador in the UK and Knopf in the USA). The title is a quotation from Naipaul's book "A Bend in the River". "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." French deals with Naipaul's family background and his life from his birth in 1932 until his second marriage