Scottish-born writer whose stories satirize the Edwardian social scene, often in a macabre and cruel way. H. H. Munro's columns and short stories were published under the pen name "Saki," who was the cupbearer in The Rubayat of Omar Khayyam, an ancient Persian poem. There are also saki monkeys, found from the rainforests of South America. Munro died at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

'In the town Yom,' said Crosby, 'which is in Southern Afghanistan, and which also happens to be my birthplace, there was a Chinese philosopher who used to say that one of the three chiefest human blessings was to be absolutely without money. I forget what the other two were.' (from 'The Romancers,' in, The Best of Saki, introduced by Tom Sharpe, Picador, 1976, p. 162)

Saki was born Hector Hugh Munro in Akyab, Burma (now Myanmar), the son of Charles Augustus Munro, an inspector-general in the Burma police. Munro's mother, the former Mary Frances Mercer, died in 1872 – she was killed by a runaway cow in an English country lane. In 1793 the son of Munro's ancestor, Sir Hector Munro, was killed by a tiger in India.

Munro was brought up in England with his brother Charles and sister Ethel by Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Augusta, the nastier of the two. They hated each other and frequently used the birch and whip to disciple the children. "I think Aunt Augusta must have mesmerised us," Ethel told later, "the look in her dark eyes, added to the fury in her voice, and the uncertainty as to the punishment, used to make me shiver." (The Unbearable Saki: The Work of H. H. Munro by Sandie Byrne, The Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 18) Munro's father stayed on in Burma.

From an early age, Munro was an avid reader. His favorites included Robinson Crusoe (1719), Lewis Carroll's famous Alice in Wondlerland books (1865, 1871), and Charles G. Leland's Johnnykin and the Goblin (1877). To the children's newspaper, 'The Broadgate Paper', he contributed drawings. Some of other drawing were accompanied with  limericks.

Munro was educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth and Bedford Grammar School. From 1887 he traveled with his family in France, Germany and Switzerland. During this period he matured into a young man, who was cultured, intelligent, and was familiar with the major European tourist attractions. In 1891 Munro's father settled in Devon, where he worked as a teacher.

Like George Orwell, Munro joined the Indian Burma Police. He adopted the view that those in the colonial service are true protectors of rural, traditional Englishness. His stint as a military policeman, which began in 1893, ended in bouts of tropical fever. Charlie, his brother, left Burma Police in 1902 to join the Irish Prison Service.

Back in England, Munro recovered his strength by riding, reading, swimming and walking in the country side in Buckleigh, near Westward Ho! In 1896  Munro retruned to London.  There he started his career as a journalist, writing for the daily newspaper Westminster Gazette. With the cartoonist Frances Carruthers Gould he began a satirical series. "Saki left most of the talking to Gould and at the beginning one had to dig hard to get a word out of him,"  said the editor J.A. Spender. ('Introduction' by Tom Sharpe, in The Best of Saki, 1976, p. 13) Munro's first published story, 'Dogged,' appeared in St. Paul's, February 1899. The Westminster Alice (1902), a collection of satirical sketches based on Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, was his earlies success. It was followed in 1902 with Not-So-Stories, a take-off of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories made up for children.

Munro's only non-fiction book was The Rise of the Russian Empire (1900). This historical study, modelled upon Gibbon's famous The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, received with hostile reviews in America.

From 1902 to 1908 Munro worked as a foreign correspondent for The Morning Post in the Balkans, Russia (he spoke Russian) and Paris, and then returned to London. He settled in the rooms at 97 Mortimer Street, where he wrote most of his best known stories. Munro was a member of the Cocoa Tree Club and played bridge. In the mornings, he wrote, and then lunched at Lyons. In the evening, he went to his club or the theatre. He had a small circle of friends.

"Only the old and the clergy of Established churches know how to be flippant gracefully," commented Reginald; "which reminds me that in the Anglican Church in a certain foreign capital, which shall be nameless, I was present the other day when one of the junior chaplains was preaching in aid of distressed somethings or other, and he brought a really eloquent passage to a close with the remark, 'The tears of the afflicted, to what shall I liken them—to diamonds?' The other junior chaplain, who had been dozing out of professional jealousy, awoke with a start and asked hurriedly, 'Shall I play to diamonds, partner?' (from Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches, Methuen & Co.,1910, p. 3)

Munro's alternate history story, When William Came: A Story of London under the Hohenzollerns (1913), portrayed what might happen if the German emperor conquered England. In spite of imposition of vulgar German middle-class tastes and Socialism ("In my husband's family for example, his generation had excellent digestion, and there wasn't a case of Socialism or suicide among them"), the Hohenzollerns turn out the be excellent administrators and sportsmen, who share with the British a love of hunting and horse-breeding and country sports, "the things most likely to keep Englishmen together on the land." (Ibid., John Lane, MCMXIV, p. 3) At the end Boy Scouts boycott a parade in front of German nobility, who sit and wait and wait. "Under the trees, well at the back of the crowd, a young man stood watching the the long stretch of road along which the Scouts should come. Something had drawn him there, against his will, to witness the Imperial Triumph, to watch the writing of yet another chapter in the history of his country's submission to an accepted fact. And now a dull flush crept into his grey face: a look that was partly new-born and resurrected pride, partly remorse and shame. . . . in thousands of English homes throughout the land there were young hearts that had not forgotten, had not compounded, would not yield." (Ibid., pp. 320-321) When William Came was Munro's last novel.

After the outbreak of World War I, although officially too old, Munro volunteered for the army as an ordinary soldier. When he send his one-word wire "Enrolled" to his sister Ethel, she declared that it was the most exciting and delightful she has ever received. But his decision was a surprise to all of his elite admirers. Moreover, Munro insisted on serving at the Front. During the encampment and training, one of his friends recalled, that he was "full of life, fun, and devilment". Munro argud that even world war was preferable to socialism.

"Hector showed great fortitude," said one of his comrades in arms, W.R. Spikesman. "He stood and gave commands to frightened men, in such a cool, fine manner that I saw many backs stiffen and he was responsible for the organization of a strong section, giving them a definite "front" to face, and reassuring word of advice." (Vicky Dawson in 'Introduction,' Tobermory and Other Stories, Birlinn Limited, 2014) Munro was killed by a sniper's bullet on November 14, 1916 in France, near Beaumont-Hamel, while sheltering in a shell crater. His last words, according to several sources, were: "Put that bloody cigarette out!" (The Wordsworth Book of Literary Anecdotes by Robert Hendrickson, Wordsworth Editions, 1997, p. 226) Munro's body was never recovered. He is listed on the Thiepval memorial to the Missing of the Somme.

Among the writers involved in the Battle of the Somme were also Robert Graves, who was wounded, and A.A. Milne, who contacted trench fever and was sent home. After Munro's death, his sister Ethel destroyed most of his papers and wrote her own account of their childhood. Like her brother, Ethel never married.

The Cupbearer (saqi) in the Rubáiyát by Omar Khayyam has little in common with the man who became known as a writer under the name of Saki. Ethel claimed that the nom de plume was taken from one of Edward FitzGerald's versions of the Rubáiyát, first published in 1859. "And when like her, oh, Saki, you shall pass / Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass, / And in your joyous errand reach the spot / Where I made One—turn down an empty Glass!" (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám: The Astronomer Poet of Persia, translated into English Verse by Edward FitzGerald, International Pocket Library, 1992, p. 55)

Saki's fables are often more macabre than Kipling's. They rarely exceed 3,000 words in length, and are peppered with witty sayings – such as "The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went." Sometimes they also include veiled references to homosexuality; the color green and the word "earnest" were used as codes in Saki's day. However, he never wrote on sex. A reader meet a lot of eccentric characters; these upper class dandies were familiar from Oscar Wilde's plays, but because Wilde's name lay under a ban, Munro was not eager to acknowledge this literary debt.

Whether Munro was a practicing homosexual, like Wilde, or not, he kept it private. The Unbearable Bassington (1912) contained the figure of Comus Bassington, one of his most homoerotic protagonists. "With a strain of sourness in him Comus might have been leavened into something creative and masterful; fate had fashioned him with a certain whimsical charm, and left him all unequipped for the greater purposes of life.  Perhaps no one would have called him a lovable character, but in many respects he was adorable; in all respects he was certainly damned." (Ibid., with an introduction by Maurice Baring, The Viking Press, MCMXXVIII, p. 18) 

One of Saki's most frequently anthologized short stories is 'Tobermory,' in which a cat, who has seen too much scandal through country house windows, learns to talk and starts to repeat the guests' vicious comments about each other. 'The Open Window' and 'The Story-Teller' were composed in the frame of a story within a story. In the latter an aunt tells a "proper", predictable story to restless, annoying children, whilst a barchelor, perhaps Munro's sardonic alter ego, manages to shock the aunt with his improper fairy tale, which on the other hand delights the children. 'The Open Window' featured a fifteen-year-old girl Vera, who manages to fool a nervous guest into thinking he sees ghosts. This young female trickser figure also makes an appearence in such stories as 'The Lull,' 'The Almanack,' and 'The Quince Tree.'

In 'Sredni Vashtar' from The Chronicles of Clovis (1911) a young boy, Conradin, makes an idol of his illicit pet ferret. It kills his oppressive cousin and guardian, Mrs. De Ropp, whom Conrad hates, allegedly modelled on Saki's aunt Augusta. Conradin chants in his room: "Sredni Vashtar went forth, / His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white. / His enemies called for peace but he brought them death, / Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful." (Ibid., John Lane, 1912, p. 100)  At the end Conradin makes himself another piece of toast. This tale has been made into a film several times in different styles. "In fact, "Sredni Vashtar" may be interpreted as one of the first sightings of that twentieth-century human monster, the amoral psychopath, and Conradin an ancestor of Robert Bloch's Psycho, with its outwardly meek, mother-obsessed serial killer who cleverly masks his violent impulses." ("Sredni Vashtar" by Aalya Ahmad, in Horror Literature through History: An Encyclopedia of the Stories That Speak to Our Deepest Fears, edited by Matt Cardin, Bloomsbury, 2017, p. 767)

Although Saki was unmistakably a misogynist, anti-Semite, and reactionary, he did not take himself too seriously. Many times his target was the women's suffrage movement. He disliked G. B. Shaw, a Fabian socialist and witty observer of social behavior. "Barnard Shaw discovered himself," Munro once remarked, "and gave ungrudgingly of his discovery to the world." (The Wordsworth Book of Literary Anecdotes, p. 226)

For decades his stories, "true enough to be interesting and not true enough to be tiresome", were considered ideal reading for schoolboys. However, he did not have any motivation in safeguarding certain aspects Edwardian culture. He frequently satirized its strict discipline, of which corporal punishment was an integral part. "Saki writes like an enemy," said V.S. Pritchett in a New Statesman review. "Society has bored him to the point of murder. Our laughter is only a note or two short of a scream of fear." In 'Laura' the title character is first reincarnated as a destructive otter after her death, and then as a naked brown Nubian boy.

Reginald and Clovis, two of Saki's most famous heroes, were portrayed in a series of stories in which the two soul mates of Wilhelm Busch's Max and Moritz shock the conventional world or leave the reader to read between the lines. When Amabel asks Reginald's help to supervise "the annual outing of the bucolic infants who composed the local choir," Reginald's eyes start to shine "with the dangerous enthusiasm of a convert." ('Reginald's Choit Treat,' in Reginald, Methuen & Co., 1904, p. 43) Religion was a good target for irony. Reginald states: "People may say what they like about the decay of Christianity; the religious system that produced green Chartreuse can never really die." ('Reginald on Christmas Presents,' in Reginald, p. 16)

For further reading: 'Introduction' by Vicky Dawson, in Tobermory and Other Stories (2014); Reading Saki: The Fiction of H.H. Munro by Brian Gibson (2014); The Unbearable Saki: The Work of H.H. Munro by Sandie Byrne (2007); 'Saki,' in St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers, edited by David Pringle (1998); 'Saki' by William Donnelly, in Encyclopedia of British Humorists: Geoffrey Chaucer to John Cleese, Volume Two: L-W, edited by Steven H. Gale (1996); The Penquin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, edited by Jack Sullivan (1986); Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro by A.J. Langguth (1981); Saki by  Charles H. Gillen (1969); The Satire of Saki by G.J. Spears (1963); The Satiric Art of Hector H. Munro ("Saki") by George James Spears (thesis, 1953)

Selected works:

• The Rise of the Russian Empire, 1900
• The Not So Stories, 1902
• The Westminster Alice, 1902 (with F. Carruthers Gould)
• Reginald, 1904
  - 'Reginald helmasynneistä: Nainen joka kertoi totuuden' (suom. Mervi Hämäläinen, teoksessa Avoin ikkuna ja muita kertomuksia, 2015)
• Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches, 1910
  - 'Gabriel-Ernest,' 'Laploshkan sielu' (suom. Mervi Hämäläinen, teoksessa Avoin ikkuna ja muita kertomuksia, 2015)
• The Chronicles of Clovis, 1911
  - 'Panin huilu' (suom. Sari Kallioinen ja Anita Puumalainen, teoksessa Englantilaiset aaveet, toim. Markku Sadelehto, 1994); 'Tobermory,' 'Sredni Vashtar,' 'Villiä musiikkia,' 'Armon ministerit' (suom. Mervi Hämäläinen, teoksessa Avoin ikkuna ja muita kertomuksia, 2015)
• The Unbearable Bassington, 1912
• When William Came: A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, 1913
• Beasts and Super-Beasts, 1914
  - 'Avoin ovi' (suom. teoksessa Fantastisia kertomuksia, toim. Sulamit ja Erkki Reenpää, 1969); 'Laura,' 'Avoin ikkuna,' 'Tarinankertoja' (suom. Mervi Hämäläinen, teoksessa Avoin ikkuna ja muita kertomuksia, 2015)
  
• The East Wing, 1914 (play, in Lucas' Annual)
• The Toys of Peace, and Other Papers, 1919
  - 'Cernogratzien sudet,' 'Siili' (suom. Mervi Hämäläinen, teoksessa Avoin ikkuna ja muita kertomuksia, 2015)
• The Square Egg and Other Sketches, 1924
  - 'Helvetillinen parlamentti' (suom. Mervi Hämäläinen, teoksessa Avoin ikkuna ja muita kertomuksia, 2015)
• The Watched Pot, 1924 (play, with Cyril Maude)
• The Works of Saki, 1926-27 (8 vols.)
• Collected Stories, 1930
• Novels and Plays, 1933
• The Miracle-Merchant, 1934 (in One-Act Plays for Stage and Study 8)
• The Best of Saki, 1950 (edited by Graham Greene)
• The Bodley Head Saki, 1963 (introduction by J.W. Lambert)
• The Best of Saki, 1976 (introduction by Tom Sharpe)
  
• The Complete Saki, 1976 (as The Penguin Complete Saki, 1982)
• Short Stories, 1976 (edited by John Letts)
• Saki, 1981 (by A.J. Langguth, includes six uncollected stories)
• The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope, and Other Stories, 1995
• The Complete Works of Saki, 2006 (introduction by Adam Rovner)
• Comic sans Saki, 2009 (edited by Richard Grayson)
• Improper Stories, 2010
  
• The Unrest-cure and Other Stories, 2013 (illustrated by Edward Gorey)
• Tobermory and Other Stories, 2014 (introduction by Vicky Dawson)
  
• Gabriel-Ernest and Other Tales, 2015 (illustrated by Quentin Blake)
  
• Selected Stories, 2017 (edited by Diana Secker Tesdell)
  
• Saki's Cats, 2022 (texts first published 1911-1924)
  
• A Pocketful of Saki: The Savage Wit of H. H. Munro, 2022 (edited by John Pidgeon)