The great man as he might appear today. Here he is, having had a shave and wearing a modern liberal philosopher’s outfit, complete with backstage pass. Mrs Mill chose his tie.
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A Bad Guide 
Grayling is visiting Copenhagen this June.
He has nicer hair than Mill.
Is the double initial a 20th century thing?
A C Grayling
T S Eliot
W H Auden
Is the treble 21st century, oh A J P?
A A Milne
B B King
C C Sabathia
e e cummings
L L Bean
S S Pierce
AJP Taylor was a 20th century thing. But you may be on to something, here. Except for TH Huxley.
J.J. Darboven (German coffee magnate)
P.P. Bliss (wrote the hymn “Almost Persuaded”)
Z.Z. Top
Grumbly, you were staring across the breakfast table. I used to work with a Darboven in Hamburg, one of JJ’s descendants, an architect and sculptor. The artist Hanne Darboven is — was — also from the coffee family.
Ack! Ackackackackack! *ptooee*
e e cummings: my father always pronounced the initials as eh eh.
W B Yeats
The idea that he wrote his name “e e cummings” is a myth; he used capital letters like everybody else.
Then there was “Saki” aka H. H. Munro.
he used capital letters like everybody else
Except m-l and the internet.
Cap’n W E Johns
Did Biggles have initials?
No one’s mentioned PG Wodehouse!
H.P. Lovecraft
J K Rowling
E.L. Wisty
A.J. Cronin
L.P. Hartley
(W.G. Grace)
RPT Davenport-Hines
CCH Pounder
(CLR James)
CS Lewis
Back to the other one: did anyone mention Arthur Conan Doyle?
God God, how could we have forgotten Sir Arthur Doyle?
I can see I’ve got work to do sorting this lot out. I may wait until later, though, because the weather is lovely.
C.P. Snow
T. E. Lawrence
I write my name in small letters here because I don’t like to stand out and I find the capitals M and L too obvious (and the M too pointy). Small l is still tall but more discreet than L.
Would you like some off-white ink?
I thought of Lawrence this morning and rejected him because he’s usually known as “of Arabia”. On reflection, that was probably daft and just means that when I was a boy boys knew him as “of Arabia”. Have we had D H Lawrence? How about J J Thomson? People actually called him “JJ”.
m-l: There is a danger that by using small letters you will stand out.
AJP, thanks, but I am not trying to erase anything. On the other hand, I was about to mention DHLawrence. And who is “Sir Arthur Doyle”? I don’t think there is such a person.
Ø, perhaps I would stand out if I was the only one to do it, but there are many others: dearieme, language hat, bathrobe, etc. I think I am in good company.
C.S. Forester
Sorry, I just noticed you mentioned him in the other thread. He’s only got one “r” though.
Foester? Foreste?
Empty is very logical and probably good at maths. Bruessel, we may have both been reminded of CS Forester because we had CS Lewis — and as usual you had the spelling right & I had it wrong.
m-l, Sir Arthur Doyle was my great-grandmother’s cousin. He was a Permanent Secretary at the Treasury during… I don’t think there is such a person. Now you’re thinking of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock is an unusual first name, come to think of it.
Not to mention his friend N S Sherlock.
RD Blackmore. Did someone say him?
Yeah, yeah, I should have said “middle r”.
I was thinking of CS Forester because I love the Horatio Hornblower books and I just recommended them to somebody on another blog.
Did Hornblower have a middle name?
Cursory research yields no evidence for a middle name. Horatio Nelson didn’t have one either.
That’s not all that Horatio Nelson didn’t have.
Horatio Matter Hornblower.
Algy met a bear.