In 1998 author Patrick O'Brian had achieved literary honors including election to the Royal Society of Literature, a Commander of the Order of the British Empire award, and the Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime's contribution to books, and he died in 2000 while his Aubrey-Maturin novels remained in print and continued to sell. The twenty-book series, which follows Royal Navy captain Jack Aubrey and ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, was praised as highly regarded historical novels. In 2024 the Daily Telegraph reported that the author's true name was Patrick Russ, who had altered his biography to claim an Irish childhood and naval experience that were not accurate, and who abandoned his first wife and two children, one of whom died, and was estranged from his surviving son. The revelations did not reduce the popularity of his books, with first‑edition complete UK sets priced at about £1,500 as of 2024 and fan communities remaining active. O'Brian avoided publicity and recalled by a friend who described his hostile reaction when questioned about his past. Scholars have debated the relationship between his self‑constructed identity and his fiction, noting his use of Buffon's maxim "le style c'est l'homme même" and his classification as a storyteller rather than a novelist who writes from inside characters. His work continues to be studied for its extensive nautical and scholarly detail and its distinctive style.