[1] During World War I he attained the rank of Major, and was awarded the MBE and Croix de Guerre in recognition of his work as a military propagandist.

Dawson soon followed: two collections of short stories (Mere Sentiment and In the Bight of Benin) and two novels (God's Foundling and Middle Greyness) in 1897 alone.

Dawson's early fiction draws on his own upbringing and travels, literary critic John Sutherland singles out for praise Daniel Whyte (1899), about his younger adventures in Australasia, and The Story of Ronald Kestrel (1900), dealing with his later career as a writer.

[6] African Nights Entertainments (1900), another collection of short stories, suggests a debt to Rudyard Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills.

[13] His younger sister, Sylvia Mary Dawson (1887-1934), became known as an actress in the English theatre prior to the First World War performing roles in plays by George Bernard Shaw, as well as in various provincial productions.

[17] Dawson appears to have separated from his wife very early in their marriage and the 1901 census records lend support to this understanding of their relationship.

The only other occupants of Chequers was Ethel Gambrill (now described as his half-sister --- but this appears to be at odds with official records which show that she was born in Hackney on 13 July 1876 and baptised at St John's Church, Hackney on 12 November 1876, with the parish register describing her parents as William and Harriet Gambrill [née Gregory][21]) and a household servant named Nelly Dowland.

[22] In turn, records relating to Ethel Gambrill's estate show that John Delacourt Dawson was granted probate on 30 July 1964.

[23] The probate register entries for both Alec and Ethel give 3 Maze Hill Mansions, St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings as their place of residence at the time of their respective deaths.

[5] This is probably Dawson's best-remembered and certainly his most frequently reprinted work: Finn, a champion Irish Wolfhound, is taken from England to Australia where he undergoes a series of adventures, being exhibited as a wild animal in a circus and escaping to live in the outback before eventually finding his old master and saving his life.

Jan is taken to Canada where he survives similarly arduous adventures, serving with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Mounties) and as a sled dog.

[28] Dawson's desire for closer links within the Empire, and his belief in the potentially reinvigorating influence of the Dominions on the Old Country, inform his novel The Message (1907), one of many examples of anti-German invasion literature published in the run-up to 1914, and also The Land of His Fathers (1910) with its Canadian millionaire hero.

By contrast the anonymously published Record of Nicholas Freydon: an Autobiography (1914) reverts to Dawson's early experiences in Australia and as a struggling journalist, but is unexpectedly bitter in tone and harsh in its realism.

During the 1920s Dawson continued to write novels including Peter of Monkslease, His Mortal Tenement and The Emergence of Marie, as well as the centenary celebration book about the Royal National Lifeboat Institution Britain's Life-Boats.

[35][36][37][38] He may be glimpsed on film in 1933 in two surviving items from his series 'Our Dogs' in the Pathé News archive, where he is described as Kennel Expert to the Daily Herald.