Gilbert frankau biography

For other people with the same surname, see Frankau (surname).

Gilbert Frankau (21 April 1884 – 4 November 1952) was a popular British novelist.

He was known also for verse (he was a war poet of World War I), including a number of verse novels, and short stories. He was born in London into a Jewish family but was baptised as an Anglican at the age of 13.

Gilbert frankau biography

After education at Eton College, he went into the family cigar business and became managing director on his twenty-first birthday, his father, Arthur Frankau, having died in November 1904. A few months before his death, at sixty-eight, from lung cancer, he converted to Roman Catholicism.

Career

Frankau served in the British Army from the outbreak of war in 1914.

He was first commissioned in the 9th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment on 6 October 1914, then transferred into the Royal Field Artillery in March 1915. He went to the Western Front as a brigade adjutant and fought in major battles