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(1890-1940) UK soldier, publisher and author, in active service during World War One, political advisor to David Lloyd George (1863-1945) from 1927 until his death. This relationship, and his affair with Lloyd George's then mistress (and eventual wife) Frances Stevenson (1888-1972) both figure, transposed to America, in his first Scientific Romance, the Near-Future Rinehard: A Melodrama of the Nineteen-Thirties (1933; vt Gabriel Over the White House: A Novel of the Presidency 1933), filmed as Gabriel Over the White House (1933) directed by Gregory La Cava. The Lloyd-George-like American President Hammond, after a car crash, begins to transform society, and providentially destroys a Japanese war fleet through the use of air power, but – after recovering his old conventional personality – dies before he can dismantle the new world order (see Pax Aeronautica). In the film version, Hammond swiftly becomes a dictator, ruthlessly suppressing opposition and demilitarizing the planet (except for America); but then dies in the nick of time Blind Mouths (1934; vt Destiny's Man 1935) less interestingly posits the collapse of a world to come after a dictator, who has ruled the inner heartlands of Europe, suffers a fatal comeuppance. Both books are written with smooth gravity. [JC]
born Liverpool, England: 11 May 1890
died Hendon, Middlesex [now London]: 30 April 1940
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Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 02:26 am on 18 April 2026.
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