The death of Oscar Wilde in 1900 left the position of The Wittiest
Man in the World open and up for grabs. There seemed no clear
inheritor. Then, over the next couple of years, in the pages of the
Westminster Gazette, there slowly emerged someone whose political
satires and sketches of society brought the Wildean barb screaming
into the new century. He was a man by the name of Hector Munro, but
very few knew that. All his pieces were signed with a name now
synonymous with wit - simply Saki. - "Youth should suggest
innocence." "But never act on the suggestion." - "Scandal is merely
the compassionate allowance which the gay make to the humdrum."
Saki's savage sketches of society were initially centred around one
character, uncannily like himself. Reginald is dangerous. Brutally
honest, not interested in mediocrity or convention, he cuts a
hilarious swathe through more polite circles. These 15 pieces were
first collected together in 1904. - "Her frocks are built in Paris,
but she wears them with a strong English accent." - "The fashion
just now is a Roman Catholic frame of mind with an Agnostic
conscience: you get the mediaeval picturesqueness of the one with
the modern conveniences of the other." - "I hate posterity - it's
so fond of having the last word." Saki (Hector Munro) was born in
Burma in 1870. He was sent to boarding school in Devon and
Bedfordshire. Following his father into the Imperial Police, he was
posted back to Burma. After contracting malaria, he returned to
England where his writing career blossomed. When war broke out in
1914, he refused a commission and joined up as an ordinary trooper.
During the Battle of the Ancre in 1916, whilst resting in a crater,
he was shot by a German sniper. His output included some of the
funniest stories in the English language, as well as plays, essays
and two novels.
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