Maurice Baring

Born in London in 1874, Maurice Baring came from the prominent Baring family and was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He entered the diplomatic service in 1898, then left it a few years later for journalism.

That change led him into some of the great events of his time. He reported on the Russo-Japanese War, wrote several books about Russia, and became known in Britain as an unusually perceptive interpreter of Russian life and literature. During the First World War, he served on the headquarters staff of the Royal Flying Corps and was appointed OBE.

Baring went on to build a wide-ranging literary career as a novelist, poet, dramatist, essayist, translator, and travel writer. He is often remembered as a graceful, cosmopolitan man of letters whose fiction and nonfiction captured both the social world of prewar England and the wider European culture he knew so well.