Beasts Royal is the second book written by Patrick O’Brian – made available, at last, for the first time since the 1930s and beautifully repackaged.

Published when Patrick O’Brian was just nineteen, this is the enchanting, often bloodthirsty collection of twelve tales of animal adventure that would be published in 1934 as the author’s second book. His first, Caesar, had been published in 1930 and was an instant success, seeing O’Brian hailed as the ‘boy-Thoreau’. As with Caesar, Beasts Royal sheds fascinating light on the formation of the literary genius behind the Aubrey-Maturin series of historical adventure tales.

With the dry wit and unsentimental precision O’Brian would come to be loved for, we see the tragedies of …