Captain blood

Dr Peter Blood has put his soldiering past behind him. He is happy tending his geraniums and his patients in a quiet English town.

But a moment of mercy sees him sent to be a slave in Barbados - and puts him on the path to becoming a fearsome pirate captain.

In this swashbuckling, globe-spanning adventure, Blood is caught up in the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion and saves the life of one of the rebels.

Notorious "hanging judge" Jeffreys sentences him to 10 years as a slave. There, he falls in love with the daughter of the man who owns him. But he risks it all by stealing a Spanish ship that attacked the town and then sailing off to form a band of pirates.

The glory of the high seas and the sound of clashing swords thrills Captain Blood. All of the time, he yearns to be with the woman he loves - who refuses to be with a thief and a pirate.

It looks hopeless. But there may just be a chance...

'Captain Blood' was made into a 1935 film starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Basil Rathbone, who later played 'Sherlock Holmes'.

For fans of 'King Solomon's Mines' by H. Rider Haggard and 'The Black Arrow' by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950) was an Italian-English writer, known for his romance and adventure novels.

He wrote 34 novels, eight short story collections, six non-fiction books and several plays. He wrote short stories at first, before publishing his first novel in 1902. However, literary success did not arrive until the publication of 'Scaramouche' in 1921.

His other most famous works were the novels 'The Sea Hawk', 'Captain Blood' and 'Bellarion the Fortunate'.

Sabatini spoke six languages, but chose to write in English because "all the best stories are written in English".