Rudolf Besier

The Stage, 18 June 1942, carried an obituary for ‘Rudolph Besier, the dramatist, [who] died last week of heart failure at Cobham, in Surrey. He was sixty-three years of age. Dutch by extraction, he was born at Java in 1878, and was educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, and afterwards at Heidelberg. He began his career as a journalist, being for some time employed by C. Arthur Pearson Ltd. His interest, however, lay in the theatre, and his ability as a dramatic author was immediately recognised in his first work, “The Virgin Goddess”, which was produced at the Adelphi in 1906 … He wrote “Kultur at Home” with Sybil Spottiswoode’. He also wrote The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1930).