The Forests of the Night the war as it really was, as James Kirkup observed, an "acid portrait of those who played at being members of the [French] Resistance". The novel's theme and title come from the opening lines to William Blake's poem "The Tyger": "Tiger, tiger, burning bright - in the forests of the night." "The Forests of the Night" was translated in 1951 into English by Nora Wydenbruck; it has not been re-printed since. Francis is the son of the Comte de Balansun, whose family resides in the French town of Saint-Clar, near the Pyrenees. Francis, in the beginning of the novel, skips
HMS Tyger approached Garden Key. The crew set fire to the wreck of the "Tyger" and again prepared to defend themselves. During a parley under a flag of truce, the Spanish informed the English that their longboat had been captured, with three of the crew killed and the rest imprisoned in Havana. After an offer of food and water was refused by the "Tyger", the Spanish sloop sailed away. In 1743 the Governor of Cuba claimed, in connection with the wreck of the "Tyger", that the Spanish had attacked and taken a launch and a sloop, and killed twelve Englishmen. The crew