Caesar is a tale of survival, love, and loyalty, by a young O’Brian who was rightly hailed, even at fifteen, as the ‘boy-Thoreau’. The fascinating career of the literary genius behind Aubrey-Maturin begins here.

‘I dimly felt sorry that I had needlessly killed these two useless things, for though I was hungry I could not bring myself to eat these smelly men.’

Written when Patrick O’Brian was just fourteen, this is the enchanting, bloodthirsty story of Caesar – whose father was a giant panda, but his mother a snow leopard. With the dry wit and unsentimental precision O’Brian would come to be loved for, we see the tragedies of Caesar’s childhood, his capture and taming, and finally his rise to fatherhood under the iron rule of human masters.