Desmond Frances Talbot Coke was born in London. His parents were Major-General John Talbot Coke and his wife, Charlotte, nee Fitzgerald. Charlotte Coke (1843–1922), was a journalist on women's magazines who also published advice books as ‘Mrs Talbot Coke’. He wrote adventure stories for boys and used the pen-name "Belinda Blinders". Perhaps Desmond's most famous book was “The Bending of the Twig” (Chapman & Hall, London, 1907). His declared aim in writing that book was “ to level destructive satire at the conventional school story, and on its ruins to erect a structure rather nearer to real life.”

Alan Alexander Milne (pronounced /ˈmɪln/) was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. A. A. Milne was born in Kilburn, London, to parents Vince Milne and Sarah Marie Milne (née Heginbotham) and grew up at Henley House School, 6/7 Mortimer Road (now Crescent), Kilburn, a small public school run by his father. One of his teachers was H. G. Wells who taught there in 1889–90. Milne attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied on a mathematics scholarship. While there, he edited and wrote for Granta, a student magazine. He collaborated with his brother Kenneth and their articles appeared over the initials AKM. Milne's work came to the attention of the leading British humour magazine Punch, where Milne was to become a contributor and later an assistant editor. Milne joined the British Army in World War I and served as an officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and later, after a debilitating illness, the Royal Corps of Signals. He was discharged on February 14, 1919. After the war, he wrote a denunciation of war titled Peace with Honour (1934), which he retracted somewhat with 1940's War with Honour. During World War II, Milne was one of the most prominent critics of English writer P. G. Wodehouse, who was captured at his country home in France by the Nazis and imprisoned for a year. Wodehouse made radio broadcasts about his internment, which were broadcast from Berlin. Although the light-hearted broadcasts made fun of the Germans, Milne accused Wodehouse of committing an act of near treason by cooperating with his country's enemy. Wodehouse got some revenge on his former friend by creating fatuous parodies of the Christopher Robin poems in some of his later stories, and claiming that Milne "was probably jealous of all other writers.... But I loved his stuff." He married Dorothy "Daphne" de Sélincourt in 1913, and their only son, Christopher Robin Milne, was born in 1920. In 1925, A. A. Milne bought a country home, Cotchford Farm, in Hartfield, East Sussex. During World War II, A. A. Milne was Captain of the Home Guard in Hartfield & Forest Row, insisting on being plain 'Mr. Milne' to the members of his platoon. He retired to the farm after a stroke and brain surgery in 1952 left him an invalid and by August 1953 "he seemed very old and disenchanted". He was 74 years old when he passed away in 1956.

George Warwick Deeping (28 May 1877 – 20 April 1950) was a prolific English novelist and short story writer, whose most famous novel was Sorrell and Son (1925). Born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, into a family of doctors, he was educated at Merchant Taylors' School. He proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge to study medicine and science, and then to Middlesex Hospital to finish his medical training.[1] During the First World War, he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Deeping later gave up his job as a doctor to become a full-time writer. His early work is dominated by historical romances. His later novels can be seen as attempts at keeping alive the spirit of the Edwardian age. He was one of the best selling authors of the 1920s and 1930s, with seven of his novels making the best-seller list.[2] George Orwell was a strong critic of Deeping's, criticising his melodramatic plots. Deeping also published fiction in several US magazines, including the Saturday Evening Post and Adventure.[3] He married Phyllis Maude Merrill and lived up to his death in Eastlands on Brooklands Road in Weybridge, Surrey.

William Babington Maxwell (1866–1938) was a British novelist. Born on June 4, 1866, he was the third surviving child and second eldest son of novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Though nearly 50 years old at the outbreak of the First World War, he was accepted as a lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers and served in France until 1917. He wrote The Last Man In, a drama, produced 14 March 1910, at the Royalty Theatre, Glasgow, by the Scottish Repertory Company; and, with George Paston (i. e., Emily Morse Symonds), a farce, The Naked Truth, which was first played at Wyndham's Theatre, London, in April, 1910, and in which Charles Hawtrey played Bernard Darrell.

Major Alfred Edward Woodley Mason (7 May 1865 Dulwich, London - 22 November 1948 London) was a British author and politician. He is best remembered for his 1902 novel The Four Feathers. He studied at Dulwich College and graduated from Trinity College, Oxford in 1888. He was a contemporary of fellow Liberal Anthony Hope, who went on to write the adventure novel The Prisoner of Zenda. His first novel, A Romance of Wastdale, was published in 1895. He was the author of more than 20 books, including At The Villa Rose (1910), a mystery novel in which he introduced his French detective, Inspector Hanaud. His best-known book is The Four Feathers, which has been made into several films. Many consider it his masterpiece. Other books are The House of the Arrow (1924), No Other Tiger (1927), The Prisoner in the Opal (1929) and Fire Over England (1937).

For recognition as a poet Theodore Goodridge Roberts has had to stand comparison with the high achievements of his distinguished brother. Yet, as poets, he and Charles G. D. differ widely. Charles began on Pierus, but wandered off into the more practical realm of prose, where, apart from occasional diversions, he has remained. Theodore, on the other hand, attacked the novel at the beginning of his literary career, and it is on the novel that he has had to depend for most of his reputation... As yet a book of his poems has not appeared. Nevertheless, the results of his muse so far, though vagrant, are sufficient to display a quality which, if not peculiar to the author, is at least vigorous and refreshing. And there are touches, even some fine conceits, in such poems as 'The Blind Sailor,' 'Private North,' and 'The Lost Shipmate' that seem to distinguish him from other poets, and to make him a man's poet. And it is on his achievements as a man's poet, and not as a novelist, that Theodore Roberts undoubtedly will stake his final reputation. –Newton Mactavish, editor of the 'Canadian Magazine' From Canadian Poets, 1916

John Hay Beith was a Scottish schoolmaster, soldier, playwright, and novelist. He was educated at Fettes College, Edinburgh and St. Johns College, Cambridge. He was a second-lieutenant in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and was sent to France in April 1915 where he was awarded the Military Cross. He was later Director of Public Relations at the War Office (1938 - 1941). As "Ian Hay", he was also a novelist and playwright.