[2] When Mee embarked on his Children's Encyclopædia in its initial fortnightly serial form, he gave to Begbie the task of writing a series on "Bible Stories".

By 1916, dismayed by the attacks being made on Lord Haldane by Leopold Maxse in the National Review, he began to question the government's domestic policy.

Begbie might be described as a Broad Church Anglican, who was interested in the ways in which modern science seemed to cast doubt on materialism by showing matter was more complicated than previously believed.

He was hostile to Anglo-Catholic Ritualism and to Roman Catholicism; several pre-First World War novels portray Ritualists as sinister and dishonest crypto-Catholic conspirators.

[5] Begbie strongly defended the reality of the alleged apparition of the Angels of Mons and attacked Arthur Machen for claiming they derived from his story "The Bowmen".

[10] After his death, it was publicly revealed by his publisher Charles Boon that he was the author of the book The Mirrors of Downing Street who had used the pseudonym "The Gentleman with a Duster".

[1] He also wrote a novel, The Great World, which was published in September 1925 by Mills & Boon and acted as ghostwriter for the memoir of the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.