Hector Hugh Munro was born in Burma, 1870, and spent an unhappy childhood in Devon. He adopted the pseudonym Saki – the cup-bearer in the final stanza of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám – after the publication of his sole sombre-toned work, The Rise of the Roman Empire. Saki published four collections of whimsical short stories between 1904 and 1914. He died on the Western Front in 1916.