Profile of Nigel Balchin on Famous Like Me

Nigel Balchin (December 3, 1908 - May 17, 1970) was an English novelist and scriptwriter, born in Wiltshire. He was educated at Dauntsey's School and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He then worked for the National Institute of Industrial Psychology. He married in 1933 Elizabeth Walsh, daughter of the writer Douglas Walsh.

He wrote for Punch magazine, published as Mark Spade, and turned to novels. During World War II he was a civil servant, then a successful scientific adviser; he rose to the rank of Brigadier.

His marriage broke up, and his wife then married the artist Michael Ayrton; he later married Yovanka Tomich, in 1953. His novels enjoyed great popular success for a time. The Small Back Room became a Powell-Pressburger film. A Way Through the Wood was adapted as a stage play Waiting for Gillian. As a screenwriter he worked on Cleopatra.

Works

• How to Run a Bassoon Factory (1934) as Mark Spade
• No Sky (1934)
• Simple Life (1935)
• Lightbody on Liberty (1936)
• 'Darkness Falls from the Air (1942)
• The Small Back Room (1943), made into a film in (1949)
• Mine Own Executioner (1945), made into a film in (1947)
• Lord, I Was Afraid (1947)
• The Borgia Testament (1948)
• A Sort of Traitors (1949), made into a film in (1947)
• A Way Through the Wood (1951)
• Sundry Creditors (1953)
• Last Recollections of My Uncle Charles (1954) stories
• The Fall of the Sparrow (1955)
• Seen Dimly Before Dawn (1962)
• In the Absence of Mrs. Petersen (1966)
• Kings of Infinite Space (1967)

External link

• Balchin family history

This British biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Nigel Balchin