Everyone knows the old tag: “The cook was a good cook as cooks go; and as good cooks go, she went.” I fancy that a diminishing number can attribute it to Saki, otherwise HH Munro, who is today no more fashionable with the underforties than are Anthony Powell or Arnold Bennett. He is often compared to Wilde, for such lines as, “Waldo is one of those people who would be much improved by death”, and “the people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally”.

Saki composed his brittle, mannered, relentlessly epigrammatic gems in the first years of the 20th century. The Edwardian country-house party was his favoured setting. Few among his characters suffered the misfortune of being obliged to work. His masterpieces were short stories: Tobermory, The Open Window, Mrs Packletide’s Tiger, The Unrest-Cure. His novels The Unbearable Bassington and When William Came are curiosities. The first addresses the fate of a youth uniquely gifted with a power to undo himself, the second is a 1913 fantasy about Britain under the kaiser’s rule after losing a war with Germany. Both are memorable, but neither are now much read.

Saki is one of English literature’s least merciful writers. Hardly any of his characters are designed to inspire sympathy, and their predicaments are sketched with loving sadism. His speciality is the imposition of outrageous fantasy on a conventional social gathering: the Adonis-like werewolf, the talking cat, the woman translated upon her death into an otter, the boy euphoric at the killing of his nasty guardian by a giant ferret: “ ‘Who will break it to the poor child? I couldn’t for the life of me!’ exclaimed a shrill voice. And while they debated the matter among themselves, Conradin made himself another piece of toast.”

Clovis, a lounge-lizard who features in several stories, enlivens a bored rural household by informing them that the bishop is in the library, and must not be disturbed. His host inquires whether the prelate wants tea, only to be told: “ ‘The bishop is out for blood, not tea.’

‘Blood!’ gasped Huddle. ‘Tonight is going to be a great night in the history of Christendom,’ said Clovis, ‘we are going to massacre every Jew in the neighbourhood.’ ‘To massacre the Jews!’ said Huddle indignantly. ‘Do you mean to tell me there’s a general rising against them?’

‘No, it’s the Bishop’s own idea. He’s in there arranging all the details now.’ ” Although this is, of course, a fiendish practical joke, Sandie Byrne recoils in a properly 21st-century fashion from Munro’s undoubted antisemitism and, indeed, from a lot of other things about the man. An academic, she finds the subject of her study (for the book is a critique of his work rather than a biography) more worthy of admiration than liking. This is true of many if not most great creative artists. Byrne’s judgments are seldom less than priggish.

Hector Munro was born in 1870, the son of an officer in the Burma Police who left the bringing-up of his children to maiden aunts in England. These tyrants provided Munro with a rich vein of material – and scope for literary revenge – later in his life. After the boy had spent a brief spell at Bedford School, Colonel Munro retired and took his progeny on a long tour of the Continent. Hector himself, although a weak young man, then served briefly with the Burma Police before a dose of fever, compounded by his loathing for southeast Asia, persuaded him to resign. He returned to Britain and became a journalist, first writing a humorous column for the Westminster Gazette, then serving as a foreign correspondent for the Morning Post in the Balkans and Russia, another fertile source of material: “It is not necessary to be called Olga if you are a Russian princess; in fact, Reginald knew quite a number who were called Vera.”

Munro was with his sister Ethel in St Petersburg when the 1905 revolution broke out. Watching Cossacks firing on the crowds and wielding their sabres was, Ethel wrote breathlessly, “with the exception of Davos. . .the most perfect time we had together”. Local friends of her brother dashed into their hotel room at intervals to report the latest atrocities: “It was more exciting than any play. On the second evening, after telling us harrowing tales of searching hospitals for his friend, whom at last he found dead, one Russian calmly invited us to go the opera with him that night!” Ethel found this richly comic. After her brother’s death she remained the impassioned keeper of his flame.

It is hard for posterity to doubt that Munro was a strange cove. He became famous as a satirist, but never made any money. We assume that he was homosexual. Byrne suggests a possible relationship with an army comrade in France. But it seems more plausible that, like many such characters of his generation, he did not practise much or at all with either sex.

When the first world war came, although he was more than old enough honourably to escape trench service, he enlisted, persistently refused a commission, and was killed as a lance-sergeant in November 1916, after uttering the immortal last words: “Put that bloody cigarette out.”

An officer in his regiment wrote with admiration and indeed reverence for Munro: “From being a very smart man about town he became the dirtiest-looking old ruffian you ever saw; and when he got really ill two months ago, instead of going home and making the most of it as those other blighters do, he managed to get back to us about a week ago .. . He did very finely for us all.”

As a profound patriot and imperialist, convinced of the superiority of all things British, Munro perhaps regarded service in France as his only possible destiny. Byrne writes: “This self-effacing, secretive man of numerous acquaintances but few intimates, in some ways deeply unpleasant, in some ways admirable, achieved popularity and even love when he was endeavouring to be a killer.”

This seems a pretty crass way of delineating her subject’s fate. Much of her work suggests a cook addressing a soufflé with a pick and shovel. She is a diligent and thoughtful critic, but a proper appreciation of Saki’s pocket genius demands a lighter pen and less ponderous judgments.

The unbearable Saki:The Work of HH Munro by Sandie Byrne
OUP £19.99 pp328

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