THE HAPPY RETURN BY CS FORESTER (1937)
The best of the Horatio Hornblower series: escapist in a gung-ho Napoleonic War way, elegantly written with a slow burning central love affair between a feisty woman and an emotionally retarded naval officer.
It’s based in the Caribbean which would make up for whatever the British weather could throw at me. For a Greek beach, I’d cool down with Nicholas Monsarrat’s WWII Battle of the Atlantic epic The Cruel Sea (1951).
William Fotheringham’s new book, A Sunday In
Hell (Yellow Jersey Press) is out now