Berkeley, Reginald
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1890-1935) UK soldier, politician – Liberal Member of Parliament 1922-1924 – playwright and author in various genres. Apparently inadvertently, he created one of the lasting myths of World War One in his novel about the German execution of Edith Cavell, Dawn: A Biographical Novel of Edith Cavell (1928), in which a German soldier named Rammler refuses to participate in the firing squad, and is himself executed. Berkeley's belief in Rammler's existence was speculative. Of his fiction of interest, Unparliamentary Papers and Other Diversions (coll 1924) contains a spoof interplanetary tale; in his sf novel, Cassandra (1931), a worker's revolt instigates an Invasion of the UK by Soviet Russia. The story is told through the viewpoint of a future archaeologist (see Ruins and Futurity) examining the little that has survived of London. [JC]
Captain Reginald Cheyne Berkeley
born London: 18 August 1890
died Beverley Hills, California: 30 March 1935
works
- Unparliamentary Papers and Other Diversions (London: Cecil Palmer, 1924) [coll: hb/]
- Cassandra (London: Victor Gollancz, 1931) [hb/nonpictorial]
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