The Nebuly Coat

John Meade Falkner (1858-1932) was an English novelist and poet, best known for his 1898 swashbuckler, Moonfleet. Surprisingly for a successful novelist, he was also an extremely successful businessman, becoming chairman of the arms manufacturer Armstrong Whitworth during World War I. He was born in Manningford Bruce, Wiltshire, spent much of his childhood in Dorchester and Weymouth and was educated at Marlborough College and Hertford College, Oxford, graduating with a degree in History in 1882. After Oxford, he went to Newcastle as tutor to the family of Sir Andrew Noble, who ran Armstrongs of Newcastle, one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world. Falkner eventually followed him as chairman in 1916, hard though this is to equate with his interest in poetry, architecture and heraldry. Amongst his works are: The Lost Stradivarius (1895), The Nebuly Coat (1903) and Bath, In History and Social Tradition (1918).