Ramage's Challenge (Volume 15) (The Lord Ramage Novels, 15) - Softcover

Dudley Pope is well known, both as the creator of the Ramage novels and as a distinguished naval historian. Pope falsified his age in order to enlist in the British Merchant Navy during World War II. In action, his ship was torpedoed and he spent 14 days at sea in an open lifeboat. After being discharged due to the injuries he received, he worked as the naval and defense correspondent at the London Daily News. He turned to writing fiction at the urging of C. S. Forester, who viewed Pope as his creative heir. Author of ten scholarly works as well as the 18 books in the Ramage series, Dudley Pope died in 1997.

Dudley Bernard Egerton Pope was born in 1925 into an ancient Cornish seafaring family. He joined the Merchant Navy at the age of sixteen and spent much of his early life at sea. He was torpedoed during the Second World War and resulting spinal injuries plagued him for the rest of his life. Towards the end of the war Pope turned to journalism, becoming the Naval and Defence Correspondent for the 'London Evening News'. At this time he also researched naval history and in time became an authority on the Napoleonic era and Nelson's exploits, resulting in several well received volumes, especially on the Battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar. Encouraged by Hornblower creator CS Forester, he also began writing fiction using his own experiences in the Navy and his extensive historical research as a basis. In 1965, he wrote 'Ramage', the first of his highly successful series of novels following the exploits of the heroic 'Lord Nicholas Ramage' during the Napoleonic Wars. Another renowned series is centred on 'Ned Yorke', a buccaneer in the seventeenth century Caribbean and then with a descendant following the 'Yorke' family naval tradition when involved in realistic secret operations during the Second World War. Dudley Pope lived aboard boats whenever possible, along with his wife and daughter, and this was where he wrote the majority of his novels. Most of his adult life was spent in the Caribbean and in addition to using the locale for fictional settings he also wrote authoritatively on naval history of the region, including a biography of the buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan. He died in 1997 aged seventy one. 'The first and still favourite rival to Hornblower' - Daily Mirror