Novelist Douglas Edward Reeman dies

British novelist Douglas Edward Reeman, creator of the Richard Bolitho series, has died.

Reeman, who also wrote under the name Alexander Kent, was lieutenant-commander of the Royal Naval Reserve and died last Monday (23rd January 2017) after a long illness.

Reeman was born in 1924 in Thames Ditton, Surrey, and penned a total of 68 novels over his 60-year long career, selling 34 million copies across 20 languages according to Penguin Random House. At the time of his death was planning a new Kent book.

The Richard Bolitho series is about a fictional Royal Navy officer. His first book, A Prayer for the Ship, was published by Hutchinson in 1958, and later his books were published within the newly created Cornerstone division of Random House, under the William Heinemann imprint. More recently he was published by Century in hardback and in paperback in Arrow.

A spokesperson for Penguin Random House said in a statement: "We will miss him enormously and our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Kimberley at this time.”

His agent Caroline Dawnay of United Agents said: “He was a storyteller not only with an unparalleled knowledge of the navy, both Nelson’s and that of the Second World War in which he himself served, but of the people themselves who ‘go down to the sea in ships’: their bravery and their frailties, their loyalties and their enmities, their longing for home. He had a sympathy with human behaviour which was mirrored in the sweetness of his own nature: courteous, modest, funny and kind. I represented him for thirty-four years and loved him.”

Susan Sandon, m.d. of Cornerstone, added: “Douglas was beloved of generations of readers from every corner of the world.  We are immensely sad at the death of this prolific and enduringly popular author, but are proud to have published him for so many years.”