Author
John Meade Falkner
1858-1932
John Meade Falkner was an English novelist and poet who chaired the arms maker Armstrong Whitworth, and is best known for his 1898 novel Moonfleet.
John Meade Falkner was born on 8 May 1858 in Manningford Bruce, Wiltshire, and spent much of his childhood in Dorchester and Weymouth. He was educated at Marlborough College and at Hertford College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1882 with a third-class degree in history.
After Oxford he taught at Derby School, then went to Newcastle as tutor to the family of Sir Andrew Noble, who ran Armstrong Whitworth, one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world. Falkner eventually followed Noble as chairman in 1915, during the First World War. His business travels took him round the world, and he brought back antiquarian treasures of all kinds. He also wrote poetry, topographical guides to Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Bath, and A History of Oxfordshire (1899).
His three novels are The Lost Stradivarius (1895), Moonfleet (1898) and The Nebuly Coat (1903). Moonfleet, the novel on this site, is the book he is best known for.
Falkner retired as chairman in 1921 and became Honorary Reader in palaeography at the University of Durham and Honorary Librarian to the Dean and Chapter Library of Durham Cathedral. He had fallen in love with Durham and, though he travelled often in his later years, he called it home, living in the Divinity House on Palace Green, in front of the cathedral, from 1902 until his death on 22 July 1932. His monument is in the cathedral's south cloister, and he is buried at St John the Baptist Church in Burford, Oxfordshire.
Sources: wikipedia.org
