The Imaginers. Tarrington's Retirement

Hector Hugh Munro (Saki) was born on December 18, 1870, in Burma (his father was the chief inspector of the British military police). Shortly after Hector’s birth, his mother died; the two-year-old boy was sent to England, where for thirteen years he was under the close and stifling supervision of two of his aunts (in Saki’s stories, the aunts of different characters are—quite vile and unpleasant, to the point of being disgusting). The boy was unusually sickly; he studied for very little time in a classical middle school. After his father, an officer-colonel, retired, the boy and his younger sister spent six years traveling around Europe (France, Germany, Switzerland). His observations and experience with many people acquired during those years later became the basis for many of his writings.