Michael Arlen

In 1892, his family moved to Plovdiv, Bulgaria, after fleeing Turkish persecutions of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

In Plovdiv, Arlen's father, Sarkis Kouyoumdjian, established a successful import business.

Michael Arlen (born Dikran Sarkis Kouyoumdjian; 16 November 1895 – 23 June 1956) was an essayist, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and scriptwriter.

Michael Arlen was born Dikran Sarkis Kouyoumdjian on 16 November 1895, in Ruse, Bulgaria, to an Armenian merchant family.

In 1895, Arlen was born as the youngest child of five, having three brothers, Takvor, Krikor, and Roupen, and one sister, Ahavni.

In 1901, apparently not feeling satisfied with Bulgaria's position in the oncoming war, Arlen's family moved once more: this time to the seaside town of Southport in Lancashire, England.

After studying at Malvern College and spending a brief time in Switzerland, the young Arlen enrolled as a medical student at the University of Edinburgh, despite his and his family's intention that he attend the University of Oxford.

If we are to view Arlen's first published book, The London Venture, as being semi-autobiographical, then we will never know why Arlen made this "silly mistake" of going to Edinburgh instead of Oxford.

We know however what led Arlen to London, where he would make his break into a literary career.

In The London Venture, Arlen wrote: "I, up at Edinburgh, was on the high road to general fecklessness. I only stayed there a few months; jumbled months of elementary medicine, political economy, metaphysics, theosophy – I once handed round programmes at an Annie Besant lecture at the Usher Hall – and beer, lots of beer. And then, one night, I emptied my last mug, and with another side-glance at Oxford, came down to London; 'to take up a literary career' my biographer will no doubt write of me."

(p. 132)

In 1913, after a few months of university, Arlen moved to London to live by writing.

A year later, the First World War broke out and made Arlen's position in England as a Bulgarian national rather difficult.

Arlen's nationality was still Bulgarian, but Bulgaria had disowned him because he would not serve in Bulgaria's army.

Bulgaria being allies with Germany made England suspicious of Arlen, who could neither be naturalized as a British citizen, nor change his name.

In London, Arlen found company in modernist literary circles with others who had been looked upon suspiciously or had been denied military service.

Among these were Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, Nancy Cunard, and George Moore.

Arlen began his literary career in 1916, writing under his birth name, Dikran Kouyoumdjian, firstly in a London-based Armenian periodical, Ararat: A Searchlight on Armenia, and soon afterward for The New Age, a British weekly review of politics, arts, and literature.

For these two magazines, Arlen wrote essays, book reviews, personal essays, short stories, and even one short play.

He had his greatest successes in the 1920s while living and writing in England, publishing the best-selling novel The Green Hat in 1924.

Very much a 1920s society figure resembling the characters he portrayed in his novels, and a man who might be referred to as a dandy, Arlen invariably impressed everyone with his immaculate manners.

He was always impeccably dressed and groomed, and was seen driving around London in a fashionable yellow Rolls-Royce and engaging in various luxurious activities.

However, he was well aware of the latent suspicion of foreigners, mixed with the envy with which his success was viewed by some.

His last submissions to The New Age, a series of semi-autobiographical personal essays entitled "The London Papers", were assembled in 1920 and published with slight revisions as The London Venture.

From this time onward he began to sign his works as 'Michael Arlen'.

In January and April 1920, he had already published two short stories in The English Review signed thus.

Arlen spent some time in France with Nancy Cunard in 1920, although she was married to someone else at the time; the relationship fuelled Aldous Huxley's jealousy.

During the 1920s, Arlen rented rooms opposite 'The Grapes' public house in Shepherd Market, then a bohemian Mayfair address.

He later used Shepherd Market as the setting for The Green Hat.

After The London Venture, Arlen worked on romances, spicing them with elements of psychological thrills and horror, including The Romantic Lady, These Charming People, and "Piracy": A Romantic Chronicle of These Days.

In These Charming People, for instance, Arlen wrote tales which included elements of fantasy and horror, in particular "The Ancient Sin" and "The Loquacious Lady of Lansdowne Passage".

The volume also introduced a 'gentleman crook' reminiscent of Raffles.

His identity is not entirely clear until the story "Salute the Cavalier".

The title of another story, "When a Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square", was the inspiration for the popular song of the same name.

These works culminated in the book that would launch Arlen's fame and fortune in the 1920s: The Green Hat, published in 1924.

He became naturalized as a British citizen in 1922, and legally changed from his birth name to Michael Arlen.

His works became an inspiration for famous Hollywood movies such as A Woman of Affairs (1928), starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert; The Golden Arrow (1936), starring Bette Davis; and he was screenwriter of The Heavenly Body (1944), based on a story by Jacques Théry, starring William Powell and Hedy Lamarr.

Arlen is most famous for his satirical romances set in English smart society, but he also wrote gothic horror and psychological thrillers, for instance "The Gentleman from America", which was filmed in 1956 as a television episode for Alfred Hitchcock's TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Near the end of his life, Arlen mainly occupied himself with political writing.

Arlen's vivid but colloquial style "with unusual inversions and inflections with a heightened exotic pitch" came to be known as 'Arlenesque'.