Guy Thorne

Writing as Guy Thorne, Cyril Arthur Edward Ranger Gull was an English journalist and novelist active in the late Victorian and Edwardian period. He produced a large body of popular fiction and also wrote under the names C. Ranger Gull and Leonard Cresswell Ingleby.

His best-known work is When It Was Dark: The Story of a Great Conspiracy (1903), a controversial and widely read novel built around a plot to discredit Christianity. The book's mix of melodrama, religious argument, and thriller pacing made it especially notable in its time, and it remains the work most closely associated with him.

Beyond that success, he wrote across several genres, including adventure, essays, and biographies. He died on 9 January 1923, but his work still offers a vivid glimpse of the tastes, fears, and publishing energy of early 20th-century popular fiction.