Navy cloth binding with gilt title and red title plate on the spine.

We provide an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.   

•     A £2 reduction when collected from FBA shop

 A good readable copy. 

The novel follows United States Navy Commander George Krause during the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II. Over an intense 52-hour period, he leads a vulnerable convoy of Allied merchant ships through the “Mid-Atlantic gap” while battling German U-boat wolf packs, severe exhaustion, and his own self-doubt. The book served as the basis for the 2020 film Greyhound starring Tom Hanks. 

Publication History

While the Companion Book Club edition in your possession is an attractive vintage printing, it is a reprint rather than the original first edition. 

• True First Edition: The novel was first published in 1955 by Michael Joseph Ltd. in London and Little, Brown and Company in the US.
• Companion Book Club Edition: The Companion Book Club edition was produced for a members-only readership in the mid-1950s (typically 1955-1957). 

Cecil Louis Troughton Smith (27 August 1899 – 2 April 1966), best known by his pen name C.S. Forester, was an English novelist known for writing tales of naval warfare, such as the 12-book Horatio Hornblower series depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Hornblower novels A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours were jointly awarded the 1938 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Other works include The African Queen and The Good Shepherd, both of which were later adapted as movies.

During World War II, he moved to the United States where he worked for the British Ministry of Information, writing propaganda for the Allied cause. He eventually settled in Fullerton, California, where he died in 1966 of complications arising from a stroke.