Writer, born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, North England, UK. He studied at Bradford and Cambridge, made a reputation with his critical writings, and gained wide popularity from his novel, The Good Companions (1929). It was followed by other humorous novels, such as Angel Pavement (1930), and he established his reputation as a playwright with Dangerous Corner (1932), Time And The Conways (1937), and other plays on space-time themes, as well as popular comedies such as Laburnum Grove (1933). He married the archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes in 1953. He refused both a knighthood and a peerage, but accepted the Order of Merit in 1977.