Stephen Graham (author)

His best-known books recount his travels around pre-revolutionary Russia and his journey to Jerusalem with a group of Russian Christian pilgrims.

At the age of fourteen Graham left school and worked in London as a clerk in the law courts and the civil service.

In the early 20th century Lord Northcliffe commissioned Graham to write reports from Russia for his newspaper, The Times.

Graham returned to Britain and enlisted in the Scots Guards, as a private soldier rather than as an officer, because "to serve in the ranks is a unique opportunity to get to know the working man".

[1] He reached the Western Front in April 1918; and the following year published an account of his wartime experiences in A Private in the Guards (1919), in which he considers the human cost at which an elite military unit is created (one whose unofficial ethos was that "a good soldier was one who would not take a prisoner".