William Gerhardie

1895 - 1977

William Gerhardie was born in St Petersburgh in 1895. He was educated in Russia and later at Worcester College, Oxford, where he wrote his first novel, Futility.

During the First World War he was posted to the staff of the British Military Attache at Petrograd and in 1918 he went with the British Military Mission to Siberia. After two years there, he left the army with an OBE, sailing home by way of Singapore, Colombo and Port Said - a journey that forms the closing chapters of The Polyglots. Gerhardie wrote much of the novel at Innsbruck, completing it under difficult conditions while his father was dying.