Michael Arlen (born Dikran Sarkis Kouyoumdjian;[a], Armenian: Տիգրան Գույումճյան, 16 November 1895 – 23 June 1956) was an essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter.

Very much a 1920s society figure resembling the characters he portrayed in his novels, and a man who might be referred to as a dandy, Arlen invariably impressed everyone with his immaculate manners.

[2] Michael Arlen was born Dikran Sarkis Kouyoumdjian[3] on 16 November 1895, in Ruse, Bulgaria, to an Armenian merchant family.

A year later, the First World War broke out and made Arlen's position in England as a Bulgarian national rather difficult.

In London, Arlen found company in modernist literary circles with others who had been looked upon suspiciously or had been denied military service.

[7] Arlen began his literary career in 1916, writing under his birth name, Dikran Kouyoumdjian, firstly in a London-based Armenian periodical, Ararat: A Searchlight on Armenia, and soon afterward for The New Age, a British weekly review of politics, arts, and literature.

During the 1920s, Arlen rented rooms opposite 'The Grapes' public house in Shepherd Market, then a bohemian Mayfair address.

In These Charming People, for instance, Arlen wrote tales which included elements of fantasy and horror, in particular "The Ancient Sin" and "The Loquacious Lady of Lansdowne Passage".

The novel was adapted for the silent 1928 Hollywood film A Woman of Affairs starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.

After the publication of The Green Hat, Arlen became almost instantly famous, rich, and as with celebrities today, incessantly in the spotlight and newspapers.

During this period of his fame, the mid-1920s, Arlen frequently travelled to the United States and worked on plays and films, including Dear Father and These Charming People.

With his following novel, Man's Mortality (1933), Arlen turned to political writing and science fiction, brushing aside his earlier, smart society romances.

In his final collection of short stories, The Crooked Coronet (1939), Arlen briefly returns to his earlier romantic, but also comic, style.

Renamed Gay Lawrence and nicknamed 'the Falcon', the character was taken up by Hollywood in 1941, and expanded into a series of mystery films with George Sanders in the title role.

That same year, his final book, The Flying Dutchman (1939), was published, a political novel, commenting harshly on Germany's position in the war.

In 1940, Arlen was appointed Civil Defence Public Relations Officer for the East Midlands, but when his loyalty to England was questioned in the House of Commons in 1941, he resigned and moved to America, where he settled in New York in 1946.