Hilary St George Saunders was born in Clifton, near Bristol, Avon. His education was interrupted by the First World War when he joined the Welsh Guards in 1916. After the war, he went to Balliol College, Oxford to study history. He soon decided that this was not what he wanted and so he started work with the League of Nations. He stayed on the job from 1920 to 1937. In that period he started his career as a writer. He teamed up with his boss, and best friend, John Leslie Palmer. They wrote under the pseudonyms 'Francis Beeding', 'David Pilgrim', and 'John Somers'. Saunders also wrote in collaboration with another colleague of the League of Nations, Geoffrey Dennis under the name 'Barum Browne'. As 'Cornelius Coffyn' he wrote in collaboration with a Member of Parliament, John de Vere Loder. In 1938, after the death of his first wife, Saunders secured the appointment as the Assistant Librarian at the House of Commons. In the Second World War, he was appointed as British Embassy liaison officer at France's Ministry of Information. By then, he had remarried. He went back to London and worked at the Air Ministry. Palmer died in 1944, and Saunders took another path in his literary career. He wrote several books about the war After the war he returned to the House of Commons, this time as a Librarian, till his retirement in 1950. A year later he died of asthma.