In Memoriam: Max Beerbohm

Scion of an ennobled theatrical family (his younger half-brother was Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree) contemporary and colleague of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, Max Beerbohm was among the principal aesthetes of late-Victorian England.

Over the years his distinguished career would run the gamut from music halls to radio, utilizing both the spoken word and the more enigmatic language of the artist's brush; yet whatever he did, Max Beerbohm made a point of using human foible as the springboard for elegant parody.

Born on this day in 1872 and knighted in 1939, when he died in 1956 Sir Max's ashes were interred in the crypt at St. Paul's Cathedral, among the most esteemed phantoms of a grateful nation.
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