Hesketh Pearson

Edward Hesketh Gibbons Pearson (20 February 1887 – 9 April 1964) was an English actor, theatre director and writer.

After the family moved to Bedford in 1896, he was educated there at Orkney House Preparatory School for five years, a period he later described as the only unhappy episode in his life, for the compulsive flogging beloved of its headmaster.

Rebelling against his father's desire for him to study Classics to prepare himself for a career in Holy Orders, on graduation, he entered commerce but happily accepted his dismissal as a troublemaker when he inherited £1,000 from a deceased aunt.

When his brother's business faced bankruptcy, he applied for a job with Herbert Beerbohm Tree and began acting with that theatrical entrepreneur's company in 1911.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Pearson enlisted immediately in the British Army but was soon invalided out when it was discovered that he suffered from tuberculosis.

In 1926 the anonymously published Whispering Gallery, purporting to be diary pages from leading political figures, caused him to be prosecuted for attempted fraud.