Hornblower and Star Trek – Connecting the dots
Image source: “Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.” Wikipedia
I recently researched about literature from my childhood: The Hornblower Series by C. S. Forester. When I got around to study the Wikipedia entry in more detail, I realized:
Gene Roddenberry was influenced by the Hornblower character while creating the Star Trek characters James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard […].
(Source: “Becoming Picard (Patrick Stewart Interview)” BBC Online)
After all, there is a red line connecting some of my favourite narrative universes. Also, many great people seem to have read the Hornblower series. Among those are of course Gene Roddenberry but also Ernest Hemingway, Jimmy Carter, Winston Churchill, Patrick Stewart and for sure Gregory Peck, who played the character in the 1951 film Captain Horatio Hornblower, co-starring Virginia Mayo. This is a great movies and I highly recommend it. Nothing to be found about any women being inspired by the Hornblower series, but I sincerely hope there are plenty.
I’d like to close with the words of Winston Churchill: “I find Hornblower admirable.” (Source: Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance, p. 382.)
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Hornblower is himself based almost entirely upon the real Royal Navy hero Baronet Admiral Edmund Burke Nagle KB PKB KCB GCH ADC. The reason no one has heard about this is because Forester was very anti Irish, and very anti Catholic, and Nagle is both of these, as well as being the premier butler of the Prince Regent.