Elliot Fitzpatrick

On the 23rd of May 2019, Hakan Bulgurlu became one of the fortunate few to have reached the summit of Mount Everest. To stand on top of the world’s highest mountain is a humbling experience, to bear witness to nature at its most awe-inspiring and...

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 22nd May 1859. His childhood was blighted by his father’s heavy drinking which for some years broke up the family. Fortunately, wealthy uncles were willing to support them by paying for education...

‘A dime a dozen’ as known in America, is perhaps equal to the English ‘cheap as chips’ but whatever the lingua franca of your choice in this series we hereby submit ‘A Rhyme a Dozen’ as 12 poems on many given subjects that are a well-rounded...

‘A dime a dozen’ as known in America, is perhaps equal to the English ‘cheap as chips’ but whatever the lingua franca of your choice in this series we hereby submit ‘A Rhyme a Dozen’ as 12 poems on many given subjects that are a well-rounded...

Vernon Lee was born Violet Paget on 4th October 1856 in Boulogne, France to intellectual expatriate British parents.In common with several other very talented literary women of the day she felt it necessary to publish under a masculine pseudonym in...

During the spring and summer of 2021, global news reports were filled with the impending US/NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan. At best, it would be viewed as a stalemate, with an orderly transition to a stable, US-backed Afghan government. At worse, it...

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu was born on August 28th, 1814, at 45 Lower Dominick Street, Dublin, into a literary family with Huguenot, Irish and English rootsThe children were tutored but, according to his brother William, the tutor taught them...

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow on 11th November, 1821 to distinguished multi-ethnic parents from a Lithuanian background.His childhood years were at the family home in hospital grounds which also contained an orphanage, an insane...

Mary Rackham was born in Norwich on 14th August 1848 to a merchant family. Little is known of her early life and her biography only re-appears in September 1871 with marriage to Fairman Joseph Mann, a farmer with 800 acres.Mary moved to Shropham,...

Little information survives on Catherine’s life.She was born Amy Catherine Robbins in 1872.In about 1892 she was a student in a biology cramming class where the teacher was H G Wells. Though married he was quickly attracted to his student and within a...

Victor Marie Hugo was born on 26th February 1802 in Besançon, France.There can be no doubt that Hugo is ranked as the greatest of French authors and poets. In addition to this he fought against social injustice throughout his life and from his...

Mary Elizabeth Braddon was born in London on the 4th October 1835.At age 5 her parents separated but her ambition to succeed was not daunted. After being privately educated she took to acting, and the minor roles she obtained where enough to support...

Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin was born on 14th February 1855 in what is now Dnipro in the Ukraine, but then part of the Russian Empire.After attending secondary school he studied at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute.Wars between and on behalf of...

Ignaty Nikolayevich Potapenko was born on 30th December 1856 in the village of Fyodorovka in the Kherson Governorate of what was then the Russian Empire.After an education that included studying at the Odessa University and the St Petersburg...

Vernon Lee was born Violet Paget on 4th October 1856 in Boulogne, France to intellectual expatriate British parents.In common with several other very talented literary women of the day she felt it necessary to publish under a masculine pseudonym in...

Dorothy Edwards, an only child, was born on the 18th August 1902 at Ogmore Vale in Glamorgan.Her father was a headmaster and an early activist in the Independent Labour Party. At age 9 Dorothy, dressed in red, welcomed Keir Hardy on to the stage at...

Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffman was born on the 24th January 1776, the youngest of three children, in Königsberg, then in Prussia but now part of the Kaliningrad Russian enclave.His parents separated when he was two and for many years life was to be...

Ella D'Arcy was born on 23rd August 1857 in London, one of nine children.Her education spanned London, Germany, France and the Channel Islands. A student of fine art, her poor eyesight meant a switch to literature was needed and with this she had...

Francis Marion Crawford was born on August 2nd, 1854 at Bagni di Lucca, Italy. An only son and a nephew to Julia Ward Howe, the American poet and writer of ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’.His education began at St Paul's School, Concord, New...

Henrietta Dorothy Huskisson was born in January 1851 in Gillingham, Kent.Little reliable information on her life is available and almost nothing on her early life.However, at age 18 she married the solicitor Isaac Edward Everett.It was only at the age...

Herbert George Wells was born on September 21st, 1866 at Atlas House, 46 High Street, Bromley, Kent. He was the youngest of four siblings and his family affectionately knew him as ‘Bertie’.The first few years of his childhood were spent fairly...

Honoré de Balzac was born on the 20th May, 1799 in the French city of Tours into an upper middle class family.At birth Balzac was wet-nursed and often then schooled away from home by parents who seemed remote. So difficult was life that at 15 he...

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on March 13th, 1884.His father was an Anglican clergyman which involved postings abroad. Walpole’s early educated was by a Governess until, in 1893, his parents decided he needed a...

It is a delicious literary irony that Mary E Penn, a writer of ghost, crime and mystery short stories during the Victorian era, is a complete enigma.Al that remain of her life are the 29 or so stories that were published or attributed to her.‘In the...