Lao She was born in 1899 to a poor Manchu family in Beijing. He left China in his mid-twenties to teach Chinese at the University of London, where he stayed for the next five years. Mr Ma and Son, serialized in 1929, was his third and final novel written during his London years. Lao She continued to teach and write upon his return to China, and became an established and respected author renowned for his humorist style. He committed suicide in Beijing in 1966, a few years after being labelled an anti-Maoist and counter-revolutionary by the Red Guards.

William Dolby (1936-2015) was a translator from Chinese and Professor of Chinese at Edinburgh University.