Ernest Charles Temple Thurston (23 September 1879 – 19 March 1933) was a British poet, playwright and author. Biography Thurston was born in Halesworth, Suffolk, England, the youngest of four children of brewery manager Frank Joseph Thurston and his wife Georgina Temple. The family moved from Halesworth to Maidstone and then, after the death of Georgina in 1895, left England to live with Thurston Snr's mother in Ballintemple, Cork. Thurston began his writing career with the publication of two books of poems when he was sixteen, followed two years later by The Apple of Eden. It was while in Cork that Ernest met Katherine Cecil Madden, (1875–1911). She was older than her partner and had already enjoyed success as a journalist and novelist. The couple later married. After living in various places, the couple settled in a house in Kensington, with visits to their country cottage at Ardmore, Ireland. They lived together happily for some years and were known in literary circles, with Thurston adapting some of his wife's novels for the stage. Temple Thurston's marriage did not last. The couple separated when he moved out in 1907, and their divorce was formalised in 1910. In September of the following year she was found dead in bed in a private hotel in Cork as the result of a seizure. For many years, Temple Thurston found it difficult to make a living from writing and worked as a yeast merchant, brewer, research chemist, and commercial traveller before finally becoming a reporter. His first novel, The Apple of Eden was issued in a rewritten form in 1905, but it was not until the success of The City of Beautiful Nonsense, published by Newnes in 1909, that he found some kind of stability. In November 1924, Temple Thurston's second marriage ended. Joan Katherine (née Cann), whom he had married a year after his first divorce, told the divorce court that they had lived happily together until 1922, when her husband had engaged a private secretary, Emily Cowlin. Objecting to the fact that the two of them were "on friendly terms", Mrs Thurston left for a holiday in India, hoping that it would give her husband time to "get over it". While there, she received news that Emily Cowlin was expecting a baby. The following summer Temple Thurston married Emily Cowlin at Kensington Register Office. It had been kept secret and only six people