Dion Clayton Calthrop

Born in Kensington on May 2, 1878, Dion Clayton Calthrop was a British author and illustrator who also worked as a playwright and studied art in Paris. He came from a theatrical family: his father was the actor John Clayton, and his mother was a granddaughter of the dramatist Dion Boucicault.

Calthrop built a varied career across books, stage writing, and illustration. He wrote novels and humorous fiction, collaborated on plays and musical works, and became particularly well known for books on historical dress and English costume, where his training as an artist gave his historical subjects unusual color and immediacy.

He died in Chideock, Dorset, on March 7, 1937. Today he is remembered as one of those versatile early-20th-century literary figures who could both write engagingly and picture the world he described.