Here’s a good website to visit. The Just One Day Project is an initiative by Victoria Leith and Fleur Missaghian to publish a series of books designed to promote unity, peace and happiness for humanity.

This amazing collection of diary entries was written by people from different cultures, ages, countries, backgrounds and professions, on World Peace Day, 21st September 2005.

Each person wrote about their day, sharing their thoughts on peace and giving the reader a window into their unique worlds. Each person did something that contributed towards peace in their local surroundings, helping step-by-step to make peace a reality by beginning at home with the individual. Each person also wrote about an organization, charity or worthy venture which they would like to promote to the rest of the world.

The book will be sold in all major bookstores in the UK, has been officially endorsed by Sir Richard Branson and has contributors from all over the world, some well-known, some not as well-known but all very important!

Vicky and Fleur are currently seeking sponsorship for the publication of the book, which has the backing of a publisher for sales and distribution but which needs finances for the printing. If you know of anyone who might be able to help, do let me know.

Technorati Tags: Just One Day, unity, peace, happiness, World Peace Day, Branson

Training ship Thor Heyerdahl in Lerwick harbour, Shetland

I’ve just finished reading Patrick O’Brian’s Blue at the Mizzen, the twentieth and last of the historical novels about the lives and doings of Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr Stephen Maturin, naval surgeon, secret agent and Aubrey’s close friend. The first of the series is Master and Commander, which is probably the one most people will have heard of because of the film starring Russell Crowe.

The Bombardment of Algiers by the Royal Navy in 1816

This is what one critic writes about these wonderful novels:

Why do the sea-faring adventure novels of Patrick O’Brian enjoy such a phenomenally devoted readership? Actually, O’Brian enthusiasts can take their pick from a variety of qualities of excellence: the sheer command of writing technique; the adroit characterisation of his heroes, every bit as rich and well-rounded as anything in serious fiction; and, of course, the bracingly-realised atmosphere of the sea on which the author sets his tales of derring-do.

As a boy I read all the Hornblower novels, which I just loved. But the Aubrey/Maturin novels knock Hornblower into a cocked hat (an appropriate metaphor, given that cocked hats were usual apparel in the late 18th and early 19th century, which is when the Aubrey/Maturin novels are set). O’Brian’s main characters show their weaknesses as well as their strengths, and O’Brian is not afraid to allow his characters to suffer - sometimes to die.

“Lucky” Jack Aubrey is one of the most celebrated captains of the King’s Navy, as the traditionalists (like Jack Aubrey) called it and is famous for his brave actions, many of which gain him and his men large amounts of prize money. But he’s not so lucky on land and makes some serious mistakes in handling his money and his small estate. He has enemies at court as well as friends and his career is not a conventional one for the time, since he is often sent on special missions to take Maturin to do his secret agent stuff.

Maturin starts out as a complete landlubber and the complexities of an 18th century man-of-war are revealed to us through the explanations given him by the sailors of what the masts and sails and various bits of rigging do. O’Brian uses naval terminology of the time without explanation, so it’s useful, when reading the novels, to have some kind of reference book at hand. The one I like is Patrick O’Brian’s Navy, a beautifully illustrated history of the naval world that Jack Aubrey would have known.

The line-of-battle ships and the frigates of the Royal Navy of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were the most complex machines of their day. Their effectiveness in battle depended utterly on the skills of highly trained crews. The most effective ships were not those commanded by tyrannical officers who meted out terrible physical punishments for the least offence; the most effective ships were those in which the crew’s hearts and loyalty were given to their captain. Jack Aubrey was a “tight” captain: he expected - and got - absolute discipline, not by flogging his men within an inch of their lives, but by being fair, by caring for his men, and by being a matchless naval tactitian.

O’Brian’s writing has many strengths, not least of which are his ability to delineate character and his descriptions of naval battles. These descriptions take one right inside the battle, with all the noise and confusion and smoke and blood. Tension rises and the outcome is never a foregone conclusion. Beyond that, the feeling he conveys of living in a wooden-walled ship and travelling vast distances across the planet, utterly dependent on the wind and waves and on the stores that the ship is carrying, is unparalleled in my view. O’Brian himself was (he passed away in 2000) a sailor and loved the sea and ships.

Technorati Tags: Patrick O’Brian, novels, Aubrey, Maturin, Navy, ships, frigates