Arthur Koestler was born in Budapest in 1905. He attended the University of Vienna before working as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Berlin and Paris. For six years he was an active member of the Communist Party, and was captured by Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He was detained in prison three times during his life, in three different countries, and was sentenced to death in Spain in 1936 for espionage, though was later released.

In 1940 he came to England. He wrote The Gladiators in Hungarian, Darkness at Noon in German, and Arrival and Departure in English. He set up the Arthur Koestler Award (now Koestler Arts) to give prizes for creative achievements to prisoners, detainees and patients in special hospitals. In 1983 Koestler committed suicide along with his wife, having frequently expressed a belief in the right to euthanasia.