Mr Fitton in Command

Lieutenant Michael Fitton Adventure #7

by Showell Styles

After a disastrous and dangerous encounter with a French frigate Michael Fitton, master's mate, finds himself in charge of the Courier's few survivors. Although not a stranger to danger, Fitton faces further peril as the crew are forced to land on an enemy-occupied island. There is also the added complication of the young wife of the British Envoy to Malta and her lover being among the survivors.

With a mutiny imminent will Mr Fitton be able to retain control of the Courier and ensure that she and her passengers all return safely?

Mr Fitton in Command was first published in 1995 and is one of a series of fictional novels about Michael Fitton, real-life sailor and hero.

281 pages, Hardcover

First published January 31, 1995

About the author

Aka Glyn Carr

Frank Showell Styles was a Welsh writer and mountaineer.

Showell Styles was born in Four Oaks, Birmingham and was educated at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School, Sutton Coldfield. Known to his friends as 'Pip', Showell Styles' childhood was spent in the hills of North Wales where he became an avid mountaineer and explorer. During the Second World War, Styles joined the Royal Navy and was posted in the Mediterranean, but even there he walked and climbed as much as he could.

An aspiring writer, Styles already had articles published in Punch, before setting out to make his living as an author. His first novel, Traitor’s Mountain, was a murder mystery set on and around Tryfan in Wales. He became a prolific writer with over 160 books published for children as well as adults. In addition to historic naval adventure fiction such as the Midshipman Quinn and Lieutenant Michael Fitton series set during the Napoleonic Wars, and non-fiction works on mountains and such as The Mountaineer’s Weekend Book, he wrote detective fiction under the pseudonym of Glyn Carr, and humorous pieces as C.L. Inker.

For walkers visiting Snowdonia for the first time, Styles' The Mountains of North Wales is monumentally inspirational, written by a sure hand and with a firm conviction and love of these mountains.

Reviews

[Edoardo Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most books and most writers are forgotten. No less than yesterday's news wraps today's chips, the flavour-of-the-month writer of a decade ago is landfill now. It's a melancholic thought. As a writer, I spend a great deal of time and effort trying to create something of value, something that will resonate with readers and cast a light (albeit refracted through the lens of the past) on the human condition. But a visit to a second-hand bookshop is enought to tell me that, despite my efforts, everything I do will be forgotten, left to gather dust on an obscure shelf until the last page cracks and moulders into dust.

So my appreciation of what Faber is doing with its new imprint, Faber Finds, where the publisher republishes worthwhile work and writers that had otherwise slipped from view, is redoubled: not only have they rescued from the obscurity of the second-hand bookshop some excellent writers but someday, after I am dead, a future editor browsing through some dusty shelves will stumble across one of my books and think, 'Hang on, this is worth a fresh audience.'

The first book I read from Faber Finds was Susan Brigden's London and the Reformation, one of the most enjoyably scholarly books I've ever read and one certainly worth republishing. Now, I've started on Faber Finds' repackaging of Showell Styles' Mr Fitton series: adventures at sea in the Napoleonic era and, I think, as good a series as CS Forester's Hornblower. They are a delight to read. Showell Styles died in 2005. Most writers, ten years after death, have been long forgotten. He does not deserve to be and, through Faber Finds, will I hope find a whole new generation of readers.