Saki (1870–1916) was the pen name of Hector Hugh Munro, a British writer of witty, often cruel short stories that mock the Edwardian upper classes. Tales such as The Open Window, Sredni Vashtar and Tobermory, in which children and animals often take revenge on pompous adults, made him one of the masters of the short story.
Works
Beasts and Super-Beasts
A Burmese childhood
Hector Hugh Munro was born in 1870 in Akyab, in Burma, where his father was an officer of the Burma police. His mother died when he was two, and he was sent with his brother and sister to be raised by two strict aunts and a grandmother in Devon.
The aunts, whom he later portrayed with savage humour in his stories, treated the children harshly. After school at Bedford, he joined the Burma police in 1893, but repeated attacks of malaria forced him to return to England after a year.
Journalist and storyteller
In London Munro became a journalist. He wrote political satires for the Westminster Gazette under the pen name Saki, probably taken from the cupbearer in Edward FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat, and was foreign correspondent for the Morning Post in the Balkans, Russia and Paris.
His collections of stories, Reginald (1904), The Chronicles of Clovis (1911) and Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914), feature elegant young men and mischievous children who delight in deflating the self-importance of their elders. He also wrote two novels, including The Unbearable Bassington.
The soldier
When the First World War broke out in 1914, Munro, then forty-three and above the age limit, refused a commission and enlisted as a private. He served in France as a lance sergeant in the Royal Fusiliers.
On 14 November 1916, during the battle of the Ancre, he was sheltering in a shell crater when he was killed by a German sniper. According to his comrades, his last words were an order to put out a cigarette. His body was never identified.
Anecdotes
Last words
According to soldiers who were with him, Munro's last words, as he rested in a crater before dawn, were an order to a comrade to put out his cigarette, whose glow might betray them. A moment later he was shot by a sniper.
Revenge of the aunts
Several of Saki's most famous stories, such as Sredni Vashtar and The Lumber-Room, feature tyrannical aunts or guardians outwitted by children. His sister Ethel said that the aunts of their childhood had inspired them.
Frequently asked questions
What is Saki's real name?
Hector Hugh Munro.
What are Saki's most famous stories?
The Open Window, Sredni Vashtar, Tobermory, The Interlopers, The Lumber-Room and The Storyteller.
How did Saki die?
He was killed by a sniper in France on 14 November 1916, during the First World War, at the age of forty-five.