Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford is a popular site for literary tourists. When I visited on a sunny Friday afternoon in late October, I watched a steady stream of visitors entering. All followed the same path to one particular grave: that of J.R.R. Tolkien.

None of these pilgrims seemed to notice they were striding right past the grave of another author. A.G. Macdonell’s resting place lies just a plot away from Tolkien’s. While Tolkien’s grave is covered with flowers, books, cards, and other Middle-earth memorabilia, Macdonell’s is bare. The tombstone is broken, and the trunk of a dead tree juts out of the earth. It’s a sad and sorry sight. No one would guess this is the resting place of one of Britain’s great satirists of the early 20th century.

A.G. Macdonell was born in Pune, India, in 1895, where his father worked as a merchant. Both his parents hailed from Aberdeenshire, in northeast Scotland, and the family returned to their home in Bridge of Don in 1897. It was in Aberdeen that I first stumbled across Macdonell. Being from the area myself, I remembered a small sculpture of his face that had been displayed in an art gallery next to the leisure centre where I used to go swimming. The sculpture is displayed only during National Reading Weeks; the rest of the time, it’s stored away in Aberdeen Museum’s archive centre. When I visited, I asked why it wasn’t on permanent display and was told by the curator that Macdonell “just didn’t quite fit anywhere.”

This “not quite fitting” seems to have been Macdonell’s perennial problem. His literary work didn’t fit neatly into the popular movements of the post-World War I era. At a time when many writers leaned into Naturalism and Romanticism, celebrating the natural world and rural landscapes, Macdonell chose satire. Nor did his work align with the emerging modernist or abstract literary movements. Even as war literature gained prominence, Macdonell, who was invalided out of the trenches with shell shock, never wrote directly about his experiences of combat, though the undertones of it haunt his work.

Instead, Macdonell excelled in satire. He worked as the parliamentary sketch writer for The Manchester Guardian, satirising the day-to-day antics of Westminster politics. His novel The Autobiography of a Cad (1938) exemplifies his sharp wit and incisive humour, telling the tale of Edward Fox-Ingleby, an unscrupulous and self-serving Conservative politician. By the late 1930s, however, as tensions with Germany escalated, the British public’s appetite for satire waned. In times of crisis, people tend to seek unity and stability rather than critiques of leadership or society. Satire, which thrives in more stable periods, became more restrained during this era.

This might explain why The Autobiography of a Cad, though well-received by critics, remained relatively obscure. One person who did take notice, however, was Joseph Goebbels. He misread the satirical nature of the book, believing it to be a genuine account. He even used it as inspiration for German wartime propaganda against the English, writing in his journal: “I read a book by the Englishman Macdonell, an unspeakably frivolous and cynical concoction that shows the English plutocrat without his mask. Simply horrifying.”

Macdonell’s health never fully recovered from his wartime experiences. He died in 1941, aged just 45, leaving behind a body of work that has largely faded from public memory.

His grave, neglected and overshadowed by his more famous neighbour, is a poignant metaphor for his literary legacy. As I stood at his graveside, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret. Here lies a writer who captured the absurdities of his time with wit and brilliance, yet today, he is almost entirely forgotten.

The Watermill Theatre’s production of The Autobiography of a Cad, however, is seeking to rectify this. While satirising politicians may not have been popular in the 1930s, fast forward nearly 100 years, and recent political events have made The Autobiography of a Cad feel rather timely. With the exceptional wordsmithery of Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, who are adapting his novel for the Watermill’s stage, Macdonell’s hilarious satire will be brought into the public eye once again.

This production breathes new life into a forgotten piece of literature that feels all too relevant to modern times. It’s a chance to rediscover Macdonell’s wit and reflect on satire’s enduring power to expose the absurdities of any age.