The Island Pharisees

John Galsworthy was born in 1867. An early encounter with Joseph Conrad helped inspire him to write, and he went on to emerge as one of the most widely read novelists of his day, a reputation standing the test of time. He was elected the first president of International PEN, the association of writers, in 1912. He is best remembered for his trilogy The Forsyte Saga, which clinched his award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. He died in 1933, aged 65.