William Bolitho

(1891 - 1930)

William Bolitho served as a lieutenant in the British Army during World War I. In 1916 a mine explosion trapped him in a trench with fifteen other soldiers, all of whom died. After a year in the hospital, Bolitho became a reporter for the Manchester Guardian; and the New York World. He died in France at the age of thirty-nine after an operation for appendicitis. “He died young enough to be called ‘brilliant,’ ” Noël Coward wrote in a posthumous collection of Bolitho’s essays, “and not decrepit enough to be called ‘great,’ which is sad, because he would have enjoyed hugely that particular form of eminence, and I feel that he would have given his wreath of laurels a slightly rakish tilt, however old he was.”