The Hornblower novels A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours were jointly awarded the 1938 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.

During World War II, he moved to Washington, D.C. where he worked for the British Ministry of Information, writing propaganda for the Allied cause.

[1][2] During the Second World War, Forester moved to the United States, where he worked for the British Ministry of Information and wrote propaganda to encourage the U.S. to join the Allies.

In 1942, while he was living in Washington, D.C., he met the young British diplomat Roald Dahl and encouraged him to write about his experiences in the Royal Air Force.

Forester's other novels include The African Queen (1935) and The General (1936); two novels about the Peninsular War, Death to the French (published in the United States as Rifleman Dodd) and The Gun (filmed as The Pride and the Passion in 1957); and seafaring stories that do not involve Hornblower, such as Brown on Resolution (1929), The Captain from Connecticut (1941), The Ship (1943), and Hunting the Bismarck (1959), which was used as the basis of the screenplay for the film Sink the Bismarck!

Forester is also credited as story writer on several films not based on his published novels, including Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942).

His non-fiction works about seafaring include The Age of Fighting Sail (1956), an account of the sea battles between Great Britain and the United States in the War of 1812.

Forester appeared as a contestant on the television quiz programme You Bet Your Life, hosted by Groucho Marx, in an episode broadcast on 1 November 1956.

After penning biographical material, he turned his hand to naval fiction, inventing a character called Horatio Howard Brenton, and attributing great feats and adventures to him.