The first ever collection of poems by the acclaimed author of the Aubrey/Maturin series of Napoleonic naval adventures.As we have stood with Jack and Stephen on the deck of the Surprise and other ships, readers around the world have been transported to a place and time at once familiar and exotic, routine and dramatic.At all times, Patrick O-Brian-s deep knowledge of the period and profound empathy with the landscape of the sea has ensured there is always a firm hand on the tiller. The writer-s command of language is combined with the poet-s eye for visual detail to remarkable, and unforgettable effect.In The Uncertain Land and Other Poems, those same strengths are vividly displayed as O-Brian leads us on a journey through his own life. Here, we see a writer full of a young man-s spirit, challenging life, and here an author reflecting an old man-s melancholy at youth gone; in between, as he describes the places that he lived and people that he encountered, are poems of sly observation,