Question: What year was English writer who was friends with John Rankine born?

Context paragraphs:
Anthony Burgess: John Anthony Burgess Wilson, {'1': ", '2': ", '3': 'FRSL', '4': "} ( ; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993) – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English writer and composer.  From relatively modest beginnings in a Catholic family in Manchester, he eventually became one of the best known English literary figures of the latter half of the twentieth century.

Matilda Hays: Matilda Mary Hays (8 September 1820 – 3 July 1897) was a 19th-century English writer, journalist and part-time actress.  With Elizabeth Ashurt, Hays translated several of George Sand's works into English.  She co-founded the "English Woman's Journal".  Her love interests included the actress Charlotte Cushman, with whom she had a 10-year relationship, and the poet Adelaide Anne Procter.

Ben Richards (writer): Ben Richards (born 1964) is an English writer.  Before writing novels and TV dramas, he worked for three years as a housing officer in Newham and Islington, London.  As a research student at UCL's Department of Geography he spent a year investigating public housing in Chile and on his return to Britain began his first novel "to alleviate the boredom of analysing questionnaires" for his PhD thesis.  Richards was a lecturer at the University of Birmingham and at University College London, where he taught development studies, specialising in South America.  He is now a full-time writer.

Frances Minto Elliot: Frances Minto Elliot (1820–1898) was a prolific English writer, primarily of non-fiction works on the social history of Italy, Spain, and France and travelogues.  She also wrote three novels and published art criticism and gossipy, sometimes scandalous, sketches for "The Art Journal", "Bentley's Miscellany", and "The New Monthly Magazine", often under the pseudonym, "Florentia".  Largely forgotten now, she was very popular in her day, with multiple re-printings of her books in both Europe and the United States.  Elliot had a wide circle of literary friends including Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins.  Collins dedicated his 1872 novel, "Poor Miss Finch", to her, and much of the content in Marian Holcolmbe's conversations in "The Woman in White" is said to be based on her.

Stephen Wakelam: Stephen Wakelam is an English writer and playwright born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire.  After Cambridge University, he was an English Teacher and Head of Department in South Yorkshire until he became a full-time writer in 1976.  He was Young Writers' Tutor at the Royal Court Theatre from 1981-1984 and then tutored young playwrights at the National Theatre Studio in the 1990s.  He has written over forty performed plays, at first mainly in television then primarily on radio.  His subjects are almost exclusively biographical, covering a broad range of interests.  Wakelam was The Royal Literary Society Writer in Residence at Universities in Leeds and Kent, 2009-12.  From January 2015 he is Writer in Residence at St Cuthbert's Society, Durham.

John Barlow (novelist): John Barlow (born 1967) is an English writer.  He was born in Gomersal, near Huddersfield in Yorkshire and educated at the University of Cambridge.  He holds a PhD in Applied linguistics from the University of Hull, and has worked as a university teacher at Corunna in Spain as well as at York in England, but since 2005 has been a full-time writer, living in northern Spain.

Mark Rankine: Simon Mark Rankine (born 30 September 1969) is an English former footballer, who played over 700 games in English football in a 19-year career.

Frank Tuohy: John Francis ("Frank") Tuohy, (2 May 1925 – 11 April 1999) was an English writer and academic.  Born in London, he attended Stowe School and went on to read Moral Sciences and English at King's College, Cambridge.  On completion of his studies, he worked in numerous academic posts under the auspices of the British Council.  This included postings in Finland, Brazil and Poland.In the 1950s, in the British Council School of São Paulo, Brazil, he ran a memorable course on The War Poets (WWI),introducing Stephen Spender and his contemporaries.  His posting in Poland provided his inspiration for his 1965 novel "The Ice Saints".  The book received considerable critical acclaim and was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.  Tuohy died in Shepton Mallet, Somerset in 1999 at a time when he was working on the uncompleted manuscript for a new novel following many years of writer's block.

John Rankine: John Rankine (born Douglas Rankine Mason 26 September 1918, died 8 August 2013) was a British science fiction author, who wrote books as John Rankine and Douglas R. Mason.  Rankine was born in Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales and first attended Chester Grammar School and in 1937 went to study English Literature and Experimental Psychology at the University of Manchester, where he was a friend of Anthony Burgess (mentioned in "Little Wilson and Big God", AB's autobiography).

Evelyn Beatrice Hall: Evelyn Beatrice Hall (28 September 1868 – 13 April 1956), who wrote under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre, was an English writer best known for her biography of Voltaire entitled "The Life of Voltaire", first published in 1903.  She also wrote "The Friends of Voltaire", which she completed in 1906.

Supporting paragraphs: John Rankine Anthony Burgess
Answer: 1917