Maurice Baring (27 April 1874 – 14 December 1945 ) was a versatile English man of letters, known as a dramatist, poet, novelist, translator and essayist, and also as a travel writer and war correspondent.

He was a youger son of the third Lord Revelstoke , of the Baring banking family, and was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. After an abortive start on a diplomatic career, he travelled widely, particularly in Russia. He reported as an eye-witness on the Russo-Japanese War for the London Morning Post.

At the start of World War I he joined the Royal Flying Corps, where he served as assistant to Trenchard . After the war he enjoyed a period of success as a dramatist, and began to write novels. He suffered from chronic illness in the last years of his life.

He was widely connected socially, to some of the Cambridge Apostles, to The Coterie, and to the literary group around G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc in particular. He was staunch in his anti-intellectualism with respect to the arts, and a convinced practical joker. He became a Roman Catholic convert in 1909.

Works

• With the Russians in Manchuria (1905)
• Flying Corps (1920)
• Passing By (1921) novel
• The Puppet Show of Memory (1922) autobiography
• C (1924), novel
• Cat's Cradle (1925) novel
• Daphne Adeane (1926) novel
• Robert Peckham (1930) historical novel
• Lost Lectures
• The Lonely Lady of Dulwich
• Have You Anything to Declare?

References

• Maurice Baring Restored, Selections from his work (1970) edited by Paul Horgan
• Maurice Baring: A Citizen of Europe by Emma Letley