His own short story

This is an academic monograph on Saki’s literary work, which does not pretend to add much to the work of his biographers, but summarises and quotes lavishly from the evidence available about his short and rather secret life. It begins with the miserable childhood and the odious aunts and ends with his death aged 44 at the hands of a German sniper at Beaumont Hamel in 1916. Its ten chapters include four which focus mainly on the fiction, but the other chapters, which are mainly biographical and arranged more or less chronologically, also include copious references to his writings.

Like most of Saki’s fans, Professor Byrne is curious about his life, which is badly documented and enigmatic. His mother died when he was a baby, and his father was in the Burma police, so he was brought up by two unspeakable aunts in Devon. As a child he was regarded as delicate.