Gilbert Frankau

Born in London on April 21, 1884, Gilbert Frankau was educated at Eton before joining his family's cigar business and becoming its managing director while still very young. Alongside business life, he began publishing early and went on to build a successful career as a writer.

Frankau became widely known as a novelist, but he also wrote poetry, short stories, and several novels in verse. He served in the British Army during the First World War, and that experience fed into his reputation as a war poet as well as a storyteller with a strong sense of contemporary life.

He remained a prolific and popular literary figure for decades, and his family was closely connected to writing too: his mother was the novelist Julia Frankau, and his daughter Pamela Frankau also became a novelist. He died on November 4, 1952.