Born in Akyab (Sittwe) in Arakan (Rakhine); which was then part of British Burma; Hector Hugh Munro was the son of Charles Augustus Munro; an Inspector General for the Indian Imperial Police.

The young Hector Munro was educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth and then as a boarder at Bedford School. In 1893 Hector Munro followed his father into the Indian Imperial Police and was posted to Burma. Two years later; having contracted malaria; he resigned and returned to England.

At the start of the First World War Munro was 43 and officially over-age to enlist; but he refused a commission and joined the 2nd King Edward's Horse as an ordinary trooper. In November 1916 he was sheltering in a shell crater near Beaumont-Hamel; France; during the Battle of the Ancre; when he was killed by a German sniper.

Saki's witty; mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story; and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde; Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling; he himself influenced A. A. Milne; No雔 Coward and P. G. Wodehouse. Pictures From History E O Hoppe