Born in 1895 in Bulgaria, Michael Arlen (Dikran Kouyoumdjian) moved with his family to England in 1901.

Arlen’s literary career began in the London of 1916, among a circle of modernist authors that included the likes of Aldous Huxley and D. H. Lawrence.

Arlen’s prolific output included essays, short stories, novels, plays, and film scripts. Though known mainly for his satirical romances, Arlen also wrote political novels and gothic thrillers, such as The Gentleman from America, which was filmed in 1956 as a television episode for Alfred Hitchcock’s series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Arlen’s early novels were followed by The Green Hat, the 1920 book that would bring him much fame and fortune. The Green Hat was turned into a play, produced on Broadway, and made into a silent movie, released in 1928 and starring Greta Garbo.

In the mid-1920s, Arlen frequently traveled to the US to work on plays and films, including These Charming People. In 1927, he joined D. H. Lawrence in Florence, where the latter was working on Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Arlen served as a model for the character Michael is.

Arlen wrote several books after The Green Hat, including Young Men in Love, Babes in the Wood, Man’s Mortality, the short-story collection The Crooked Coronet, and his final book, The Flying Dutchman (1939).

In 1940, Arlen was appointed as Civil Defence Public Relations Officer for the East Midlands, but after his loyalty to England was questioned in the House of Commons, he resigned his post and eventually moved to New York, in 1946.

Arlen died in 1956, after being unable to write another book in the last decade of his life.