Flora Shaw, a distant cousin of the writer George Bernard Shaw, was born in Woolwich in 1852. In 1877 she published her first novel 'Castle Blair', which became a childrens' classic, and she began to move in literary circles, befriending the writers John Ruskin, George Meredith and Robert Louis Stevenson. After an introduction to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, her letters home from visits to Gibraltor, Morocco and Egypt were published by the Manchester Guardian and in 1892 The Times sent her as special correspondent to South Africa; she subsequently became The Times' permanent colonial correspondent. By 1900 she had resigned her post, and in June 1902 she married the colonial administrator, Sir Frederick Lugard. She followed him on postings to Africa and Hong Kong. In 1916 she was awarded the D.B.E. for her support of Belgian refugees during the First World War. Her husband was raised to the peerage in 1928 and she died shortly after in the early months of 1929