English aristocrat and writer Osbert Sitwell was BOTD in 1892. Born in London to an aristocratic family, he grew up in his family’s ancestral home in Scarborough, and studied at Eton College. After a brief stint in the British Army, he transferred to the Grenadier Guards at the Tower of London, making it easier for him to visit art galleries and theatres. At the outbreak of World War One, he was despatched to the trenches at Ypres, where he wrote his first poetry. After the war, he began literary collaborations with his brother Sacheverell and sister Edith, publishing poetry, novels, art criticism and travelogues. Known collectively as The Sitwells, they befriended most of the leading literary figures of her time, including Ottoline Morrell, Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yates, T. S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell and Dylan Thomas. An ardent Royalist, he attacked the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in his 1936 poem Rat Week, causing controversy when it was published without his permission. A patron of the arts, he sponsored a controversial exhibition of art by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Amedeo Modigliani, and provided financial backing to composer William Walton, scripting the libretto for his 1931 cantata Belshazzar’s Feast. In 1943, he succeeded his father to the Sitwell baronetcy, and published four volumes of autobiography, nostalgically recalling his upbringing and sharing gossipy anecdotes about his high society acquaintances. He had a long-term relationship with writer David Stuart Horner, meeting in 1923 and living together for nearly forty years in an open relationship. He died in 1969, aged 76.