Thomas was "a remote and hard man" with an "explosive temper", but it was Mary Hulme that was "the disciplinarian in the family... a spirited, independent woman with a good sense of humour and a command of repartee."

"[3] Hulme was educated at Newcastle-under-Lyme High School and, from 1902, St John's College, Cambridge, where he read mathematics, but was sent down in 1904 after rowdy behaviour on Boat Race night.

He returned to his studies at University College London, before travelling around Canada and spending time in Brussels acquiring languages.

The most important influences on his thought were Bergson, who asserted that 'human experience is relative, but religious and ethical values are absolute'[7] and, later, Wilhelm Worringer (1881–1965), German art historian and critic – in particular his Abstraktion und Einfühlung (Abstraction and Empathy, 1908).

[22] He championed the art of Jacob Epstein and David Bomberg, was a friend of Gaudier-Brzeska, and was in on the debut of Lewis's literary magazine BLAST and vorticism.

Notable publications during this period for that magazine were "War Notes", written under the pen name "North Staffs", and "A Notebook", which contains some of his most organised critical writing.

[...] On 28 September 1917, four days after his thirty-fourth birthday, Hulme suffered a direct hit from a large shell which literally blew him to pieces.

Apparently absorbed in some thought of his own he had failed to hear it coming and remained standing while those around threw themselves flat on the ground.