In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.

Walpole attended Emmanuel College Cambridge Walpole's father hoped that his son would follow him into the clergy but after working between 1906 and 1909 as a lay missioner at the Mersey Mission to Seamen in Liverpool and as a teacher Walpole took up writing as his career. S. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography summed up: "His psychology was not deep enough for the polemicist his diction not free enough for those returning from war and his zest disastrous to a public wary of personal commitment".

A prolific writer he publiHugh Walpoled thirty-six novels five volumes of short stories two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting his vivid plots his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America.