Hugh Walpole born 13 March 1884 (d. 1941)Sir Hugh Walpole was born in Auckland, New Zealand but raised and educated in England in Canterbury and at Cambridge University. He was a teacher turned novelist, writing successfully and profitably in many genres - novels, short stories, school novels, gothic horror and biography. He also wrote plays & screenplays, including the 1935 MGM George Cukor-directed David Copperfield.
Walpole's first novel was The Wooden Horse (1909) and Fortitude (1913) his first great novelistic success. He worked for the Red Cross in Russia during World War I, an experience that fed his The Dark Forest (1916) and The Secret City (1919). The latter won the inaugural James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Walpole lived in the Lake District from 1924 to his death. There he wrote many of his best known works, including the family saga The Herries Chronicle (1930-1933); this four-novel family saga is probably his best known work.
Walpole was a prominent member of 1930s London gay literary society along with Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood.
His greatest loves were the celebrated Danish tenor, Lauritz Melchior (probably) and in 1929 he met a handsome London police constable named Harold Cheever, often described as his 'chauffeur and companion', with whom he spent the rest of his life.
He was knighted in 1938.
He died from a heart attack in 1941 while doing volunteer war work in Keswick in Cumbria where he lived and based many of his most enduring stories.