English writer and cartoonist Max Beerbohm was BOTD in 1872. Born in London to a prosperous middle-class family, he studied at Oxford University where he befriended Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley, publishing articles and caricatures in Beardsley’s journal Yellow Book. In 1895, he travelled to America as secretary to his half-brother, the actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree. On his return to England, Beerbohm published The Works of Max Beerbohm and his first book of drawings, Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen, in 1896, establishing his literary reputation. He succeeded his friend George Bernard Shaw as drama critic for the Saturday Review, a position he held for 12 years. His novel Zuleika Dobson, a satire of undergraduate life at Oxford, was published in 1911 and became a success. He married the American actress Florence Kahn in 1904, moving to Rapallo in Italy where they lived for the next 50 years, hosting a distinguished salon of English expatriates and celebrity visitors. He continued publishing polite, light-hearted caricatures of the British royal family and public figures, saving his venom for the British colonial project (characterised as the blustering ‘John Bull’) and Rudyard Kipling. Biographers have speculated that his marriage to Kahn was unconsummated and a cover for his closeted homosexuality. He died in 1956, aged 83, shortly after marrying his secretary and companion Elisabeth Jungmann.