Arthur Bingham Walkley

As a journalist he worked with Bernard Shaw on The Star at the beginning of his newspaper career; he is probably best known for his twenty-six years as theatre critic of The Times.

[1] He was educated at Lord Weymouth's School, Warminster, and then gained an exhibition in mathematics at Balliol College, Oxford, matriculating in October 1873.

[4] An obituary notice in The Times stated that Walkley could have risen to higher official positions, but chose not to pursue them, preferring to devote his energies to dramatic criticism.

Nevertheless, he took a pride in the execution of his official work, which The Times considered "set a standard which has served as a model to the younger generation in the Civil Service".

[2] He contributed general articles to a weekly review, The Speaker during the 1880 and 1890s, and when the London evening newspaper The Star was founded in January 1888 he was appointed its theatre critic.

On one occasion Walkley filled in for Shaw and signed himself "Bono di Corsetto", an early instance of a certain frivolous side to his writing – something that made many readers underestimate his fundamental seriousness.

Walkley was in on the joke and helped Claude King, the actor playing Trotter, to mimic his personal appearance.

In his review he gravely noted that Trotter is a "pure figment of the imagination, wholly unlike any actual person".

[8] After his retirement from the Post Office in July 1919 Walkley added to his regular theatre reviews a series of essays published weekly in The Times on a range of subjects close to his heart; these included Jane Austen (whom some thought the only English novelist he truly loved),[9][n 1] Dr Johnson, Dickens and Lamb.

[n 2] His fellow critic St John Ervine wrote in The Observer: Myself, on Wednesday mornings, I turned first to the [Walkley] column … for to open one's eyes and reach for The Times and read A.B.W.

… This, especially in his earlier years, was of great help to English drama, which was then beginning a new period and breaking free from certain conventions of dramatic form and content.

[1]As he grew older Walkley became less enamoured of avant garde drama, finding well-made plays – French in particular – more congenial.