[2] As a very young man he moved in London literary circles championing traditional verse and writing as opposed to modernism.

Gawsworth's longest piece of written work was a biography of Machen, but he could find no publisher for it in the thirties.

[4] Three companion titles appeared in similar editions at the same time: In Spring by Edith Sitwell, In Summer by Edmund Blunden and In Autumn by Herbert Palmer.

During World War II, he served, under the alias T E Shavian, in the Royal Air Force as an aircraftman in North Africa (T. E. Shaw being the postwar name adopted by T. E. Lawrence).

As literary executor to M. P. Shiel, Armstrong also inherited the throne of the Kingdom of Redonda styling himself H.M. Juan I.

[6] The independent publisher Jon Wynne-Tyson became Gawsworth's literary executor in 1970, also becoming H.M. Juan II but Wynne-Tyson "abdicated" in favour of the Spanish novelist and translator Javier Marías— H.M. Xavier I – who became both Shiel's and Gawsworth's literary executor.