The Gun

Abandoned by the retreating Spanish army during the Peninsular War, the gun is an eighteen pounder bronze cannon, thirteen feet long, weighing three tons.

When a group of Spanish partisans come across it two years later they see in it a chance for victory against the French – but first they must haul it across the mountains with nothing but a handful of donkeys and half-starved oxen.

On its epic journey the cannon begins to gain almost mystical significance. For, with the gun, they are no longer a band of Spanish irregulars, they are an army able to take on the cream of Napoleon’s troops…

Author Biography

Cecil Scott Forester was born in 1899 in Cairo and educated in England. He went to Hollywood during the opening years of World War II to help write and produce ‘propaganda’ films that would convince U.S. filmgoers that the they should take the side of the British and Allies in the War, which led to such films as Eagle Squadron (1941). He is most famous for his celebrated Hornblower series. He died in 1966.