English novelist and playwright, born at Sydenham, Kent, on the 30th of October 1861. Educated at Harrow and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he received a commission in the Rifle Brigade in 1883. In 1894 he published his first novel, and in 1897 the first to make its mark, viz., A Drama in Sunshine. Subsequent novels included John Charity (1900); Brothers (1904) and The Hill (1905), both Harrow school stories; The Waters of Jordan (1908) and The Fourth Dimension (1920). He is the author of many plays, some, such as Searchlights (1915) and The Case of Lady Camber (1915) original; others, such as Her Son (1907) and Quinney’s (1915), dramatizations of his own novels, or like Fishpingle (1916), afterwards issued as novels; whilst others again, e.g., Who is He? (1915) and The House of Peril (1919), were dramatized versions of novels by other authors.