Horace Cecil Hunt, born London, 13 September 1902, died London, 13 July 1954, age 51 years, was a prolific journalist, editor, novelist and anthologist, who is best known for his collections of unintended errors made by British schoolchildren in their examinations and written work, commonly known as 'howlers'.

Cecil Hunt was educated at Southgate County School, now known as Southgate School

Southgate School

Southgate School is a state comprehensive secondary school in the London Borough of Enfield. It has approximately 1574 pupils.The school has Specialist Science Status. The school is situated just east of the Cat Hill roundabout of the A111 and A110, between Cockfosters and Oakwood tube stations...

, then at Kings College, London, where he studied journalism. He started work in the insurance business but wrote articles for newspapers until he was offered a job by the publishing company of Ernest Benn

Ernest Benn

Sir Ernest John Pickstone Benn, 2nd Baronet was a British publisher, writer and political publicist. His father, John Benn, was a politician, who had been made a baronet in 1914. He was an uncle of the Labour politician Tony Benn.-Biography:Benn was born in Oxted, Surrey...

 to edit periodicals such as The Chemical Age and The Fruit Grocer. In 1928 Benn published Hunt’s first collection of ‘Howlers’ to great success and he followed these up with several other collections in the late 1930s for the publisher Methuen. For example: 'An epistle is the wife of an apostle'; 'Two crotchets make a quaker'; 'Lourdes is a cricket ground in London'; and 'Parsimony is money left by your father.

In 1930 Hunt joined the staff of The Daily Mail

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

 newspaper for whom he was soon appointed Fiction Editor. During the 1930s he wrote several novels under his own name and two using the pseudonyms Robert Payne and John Devon. The reason for using two pseudonyms for the same two novels is unclear, but may have occurred because of a clash with another writer also named Robert Payne

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne , was a novelist, historian, poet, and biographer.Born in Cornwall, the son of an English naval architect, and with a French mother. He worked as a shipbuilder and then for a time with the Inland Revenue. In 1941 he became an armament officer and chief camouflage...

. Hunt also wrote guides to journalism, publishing and writing stories; books on the origins of words and ceremonies; collections of unintentionally funny letters, epitaphs, last words, jokes, amusing notices and signs; and collections of questions for use in quizzes on topics such as music, books and sport. Hunt was latterly editor of children’s fiction for Raphael Tuck until poor eyesight forced him to retire.

Cecil Hunt collaborated with two notable artists. First, with Edmund Blampied

Edmund Blampied

Edmund Blampied was one of the most eminent artists to come from the Channel Islands, yet he received no formal training in art until he was 16 years old...

, who illustrated three collections of children’s howlers and an anthology of proverbs. He also collaborated with W. Heath Robinson

W. Heath Robinson

William Heath Robinson was an English cartoonist and illustrator, best known for drawings of eccentric machines....

on three illustrated books published during the Second World War, all illustrated with Robinson’s typically complicated and fanciful contraptions.

Cecil Hunt married Kathleen Dykes (b 1904) in 1926, and they had two sons, Peter (b 1927, d 2009) and David (b 1930, d 1998).