Cecil Louis Troughton Smith, known by his pen name C. S. Forester, was an English novelist renowned for his tales of naval warfare. He is best known for the Horatio Hornblower series, which includes 12 books about a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Hornblower novels A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours were jointly awarded the 1938 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Other notable works include The African Queen and The Good Shepherd, both adapted into films.

During World War II, Forester moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked for the British Ministry of Information, crafting propaganda for the Allied cause. He later settled in Fullerton, California, and passed away in 1966 due to complications from a stroke.