Halsbury, Earl of
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Working name and title of UK barrister and author Hardinge Goulburn Giffard (1880-1943), Second Earl of Halsbury; his father, Hardinge Stanley Giffard (1823-1921), the first earl, was British Lord Chancellor for seventeen years at the end of the nineteenth century; Giffard was in active service during World War One. His Future War novel, 1944 (1926), depicts a cataclysmic conflict in which the USSR attacks London from the air, leaving only a few survivors. The war becomes worldwide; America, having wasted its substance in another Civil War generated by racism against Blacks (see Race in SF), must endure a successful Invasion from Japan. The protagonist, a modern Noah, prepares to leave the shattered island by ark, but is told that the USSR has been itself obliterated, and returns to build a new society in the ruins of the Post-Holocaust UK. Giffard's later life was clouded by bankruptcy proceedings which drove him to France, where he died in an internment camp. [JC]
Hardinge Goulburn Giffard, Second Earl of Halsbury
born London: 20 June 1880
died Nancy, France: 15 September 1943
works
- 1944 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1926) [hb/]
links
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