Nigel Marlin Balchin
1908 - 1970

Nigel Marlin Balchin was born on 3rd December 1908, the youngest son of William Balchin, a shopkeeper in the small West Country village of West Lavington. His was a lower middle class family, and neither his brother nor his sister showed any of his determined and persevering fascination with books and learning from an early age. It was an unsupportive upbringing for a budding scholar, for there was little interest and less money to be spared for his ambitions. In business Mr. Balchin senior was neither talented nor successful, a factor that may have had some bearing on Nigel's lifelong preoccupation with the techniques and machinations of the factory floor. He grew up intensely aware of money - the need to make it, the difficulty of keeping it, and the uncertain nature of its continued arrival. Even at the height of his career, when he was by any standards a wealthy man, the shadow of poverty remained with him, although paradoxically he was also extremely generous.
Highly intelligent and verbally fluent, Nigel won a scholarship to the nearby Dauntsey's School which provided him with all the support and sympathy he had lacked at home. Academically he excelled, and also developed a love of cricket which remained with him for the rest of his life. From Dauntsey's School he won a further scholarship to read Sciences at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He accepted, reluctantly, because although he was interested in science, his true passion lay on the arts side, and he already dreamed of a career as a writer. However, without the scholarship there was no university education, and he duly became an Exhibitioner and Prizeman at Peterhouse, and in time (1930) obtained a First Class Honours degree in Natural Sciences. During those Cambridge years he also wrote his first short stories, in which the scientific life he pursued by day reappeared by night in fictional guise.
After graduation, the excellence of his degree would have meant a ready path in to academic research. However, he was more interested in theory of use to people than abstract concepts, and instead he joined the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, becoming consultant to Rowntrees. His job there was a pioneering one - liasing between management and workforce, he studied the psychology of the workplace and how it could best be developed and adapted to provide the greatest possible efficiency and best working conditions. his involvement with all levels of manufacturing bore fruit in more than one direction, for he also conceived of the bubble-filled chocolate Aero, and suggested the name KitKat for the company's latest chocolate bar.
In 1933 he married Elizabeth Walsh, daughter of the writer Douglas Walsh, whom he met at Cambridge where she was reading Archaeology and Anthropology. His first novel, No Sky, was written on their honeymoon, and in the copy he gave Elizabeth he wrote 'For ourselves. Kept like a baby's first shoes, as a pathetic relic of one's first blunders.' In fact it was far from the inept production he implied; his writing was already stylish and accomplished, and his sense of plot and characterisation impressively assured. It received excellent reviews and sold well, as did Simple Life, published in 1935. Their first child Prudence was born in 1934.
Whilst writing his first two novels he was also contributing to Punch under the pseudonym Mark Spade. How to run a Bassoon Factory and Business for Pleasure are witty, satirical and telling sketches offering tongue-in-cheek advice to the aspiring businessman. Begun in the form of a series of sketches, the whole collection was published much later in 1956 as an omnibus edition.
Meanwhile, family life for the Balchins continued in Highgate, with the birth of a second daughter Penelope in 1937. (She has in adult life become the famous childcare guru, Dr Penelope Leach.) At this time Nigel continued to double as writer and workplace consultant at Rowntrees, commuting to York at least once a week. He produced a companion to the Mark Spade series -Income and Outcome - and in 1936 broke new ground with Lightbody on Liberty, the story of a small-time shopkeeper transformed into a crusader for justice. It was a funny, exciting and moving novel, which brought the name of Balchin to new prominence.
However, there was no time for Nigel to capitalise on this, to him, unexpected and somewhat bewildering acclaim. In Whitehall, the shadows of war were already gathering, and discreet recruitment of the exceptionally able and informed from all fields of industry was taking place by the Government. Nigel was approached, and in the course of time appointed both to the personnel section of the War Office as a consultant and psychologist, and to the British War Council as a Deputy Scientific Adviser, in time rising to the rank of Brigadier General.
The dual nature of his work and his excellence in both fields was another example of his versatility; it also put him in a unique position for gathering the heterogeneous material for the three novels which ensured his reputation. The first of these, his fourth novel published in 1942, was Darkness Fails from the Air, and his first popular success. It gives a compelling account of life during the London Blitz and the multi-stranded and disabling frustrations of a temporary civil servant endeavouring to serve his country against constant checks of petty bureaucracy.
Probably his most famous book, The Small Back Room was published in 1943; the hero Sammy Rice is a crippled scientist fighting against personal demons of pain and alcohol, as well as the ineptitude and corruption of the departmental politicking and ministerial ignorance which makes his vital work almost impossible. This book added to the English language, giving us 'boffin' and 'backroom boy' as terms of common parlance. It struck a nerve in contemporary wartime Britain, and has continued to do so to this day. Sammy became one of the early prototypes for the cynical and reluctant hero who has dominated modern fiction, from Graham Greene (with whom Nigel was often compared in his day) to Dick Francis, whose best-seller status in the popular market parallels Nigel's in the closing years of the war. The novel was made into a successful film in 1949, which is shown periodically on Channel 4 and at the National Film Theatre.
In 1945 Mine Own Executioner was published, and became arguably his most popular novel - a psychological thriller, for which Nigel subsequently wrote the scenario for the motion picture starring Burgess Meredith.
Whilst working in his wartime posts, Nigel and Elizabeth travelled the country as the Army Council shifted its headquarters from the capital to Wales and back again to London, where Elizabeth secured a job vetting potential agents for the espionage unit, S.O.E.
After the war, the Balchins, now a family of five with the arrival of their third daughter, Freja, on Boxing Day 1944, moved from London to Leigh Barton, a rambling black-beamed farmhouse at Stelling Minnis in Kent. It was an idyllic rural setting, but within commuting distance of London and gave Nigel peace for his writing, to which he could then devote more of his time. He continued his advisory work at Rowntrees, newly reopened after the war. His reputation grew tremendously, but he also had time to pursue other hobbies with equal perfectionism and intensity. He as a keen gardener, loved roses and fruit trees which he cultivated with the scientific precision of grafting, pruning and pollination whilst also taking great pleasure in the aesthetic and sensual results. Although essentially a solitary person, he joined in the life of the village and rekindled his love of cricket by playing in village matches. When he allowed himself time away from his writing, he enjoyed wood-carving and small-scale cabinet making.
After the successes of his wartime novels, he felt free to experiment with different genres. Unlike so many popular novelists, he was never content merely to exploit the formula of previous successes, and instead was constantly pressing towards the boundaries of fiction. Although he had attempted playwriting during the war, Miserable Sinners and Leader of the House were not successful. However, shortly afterwards he adapted Mine Own Executioner and Howard Spring's Fame is the Spur for the screen, both proving highly successful and acclaimed films which led him towards the dramatic form of his next novel, Lord I Was Afraid, published in 1947. It was a brilliant, allegorical and ambitious documentation of the effects of war and its aftermath on ordinary people, their intelligence, aspirations, innocence and cynicism, and the complex variations on those traits which constitute character, always the chief motivating interest of his writing. The result, even today, is an exposition of why the 'New World' failed to materialise out of the ashes of Belsen and Hiroshima, all the more chilling for the apparent triviality of its setting and protagonists. Unfortunately, the book failed, being too inaccessible for most of his readers who were simply accustomed to 'a good read'. This was bitter confirmation of his inescapable conviction that he was most valued for a kind of competent craftsmanship, and fell far short of the creative genius to which his relentless perfectionism aspired.
Nigel was still experimenting in his subsequent novel, The Borgia Testament, which was published in 1948. This is a first-person account - and to some extent a justification - of the life of Cesare Borgia related four and a half centuries after his death. His approach was both scholarly and rigorous, and found favour again with his readers, re-establishing him as a popular 'serious' novelist. He drew on his day job for his next novel, A Sort of Traitors, published in 1949, and once again the 'scientists as human beings, only more so' formula charmed the lectorate. He followed this with a volume of thirteen essays about famous criminals, The Anatomy of Villainy (1950), which includes studies of Guy Fawkes, Judas Iscariot and Rasputin.
Sadly, however, life at home, whilst eminently satisfactory for Nigel - interspersed with visits to London for his advisory work for industry, membership of the Saville Club where he was esteemed and very enthusiastic - was less so for Elizabeth. The marriage had for some time been difficult; Nigel never really understood his wife, trying unsuccessfully to give her what she wanted and needed. She had held a position of authority during the war years, but he had expected her to return to a life of domesticity which for a woman of her intelligence and background was hard, if not impossible, to accept.
His habit of bringing home interesting people to meet Elizabeth at Leigh Barton finally brought matters to a head when Nigel introduced, in 1948, a young painter, sculptor and writer, Michael Ayrton, to her. Initially he was pleased with their rapport, and when Joan, Michael's long term partner, became Nigel's lover on a light-hearted and temporary basis, the four spent a good deal of time together in an amiable menage á quatre - combining travel in Europe with weekends at Leigh Barton. Unfortunately, Elizabeth did not share her husband's mutually enjoyable essentially, trivial polygamy, and fell deeply in love with Michael despite his being eleven years her junior. Eventually the Balchins agreed to part, and the marriage was finally dissolved in 1950. A year later the former Mrs Balchin became Mrs Michael Ayrton. Nigel was not only faced with the loss of his wife, but also his best friend. Michael had all the self-confidence in his own talent that Nigel lacked; the fact that out of this autonomy he could also give Elizabeth the kind of support and happiness which Nigel had intended to provide, despite his failings, made the whole affair all the more bitter.
Following the break-up of his marriage to Elizabeth, Nigel was forced to sell Leigh Barton, his home in Kent, and for some months he lived in a series of rented flats in London - an unsatisfactory arrangement which eventually became intolerable. There was the welfare of his three children to consider, and Nigel resented the idea of his family moving in to the casual bohemian squalor of Michael Ayrton's home in All Soul's Place. It would have added insult to injury, and for months he used every possible resource to prevent it. It would be intolerable, he declared, for his children to associate with Michael's drunken friends in a household founded on an immoral relationship. The two younger children were made Wards of Court, and it was made clear to Elizabeth that if she wished to keep them, she must remain in her own flat. Prue and Penny, now 14 and 11, were established in a respectable day school nearby, and the uncomfortable shuttling between flats continued, unsatisfactory for all concerned and doing nothing to resolve an increasingly tense situation.
However, in the spring of 1950 Elizabeth moved in with Michael, bringing five year old Missie (Freya) with her. To do Nigel justice, he never seriously proposed separating his youngest daughter from her mother. Meanwhile, both the elder girls rebelled against the new school. Prue, having obtained her School Certificate with matric exemption at the early age of 14, announced her desire to go on the stage. She secured herself a place at LAMDA, abandoning her younger sister without a qualm, while poor Penny was left, at Nigel's insistence, to the miseries of an exclusive boarding school in Malvern which she loathed even more than the day school, and suffered greatly from homesickness. Elizabeth did not approve of Penny being sent away, but Nigel was adamant, and once it had been forced upon her, she felt free to move in permanently with Michael, who later proved himself to be an excellent stepfather.
None of the Balchin children resented the part played in breaking up their family life, not even Prue, who, old for her years and devoted to both Nigel and her mother, would have been ready to find a scapegoat for her divided loyalties in her mother's lover. Instead she liked him from the start. But Nigel remained determined that the Ayrton establishment was unsuitable for his children, and must be only a temporary solution. However, when Penny was sent home from boarding school with pneumonia, Nigel had to reluctantly agree with Elizabeth that she should stay at All Soul's Place, as he did not feel able to cope with a sick child. Michael accepted a third Balchin child in to the household, but when Penny and Missie began squabbling over a bedroom, he realised that lack of space was becoming a problem. Elizabeth was dying to leave London and return to the country where she felt Nigel would accept such an establishment as suitable for the two girls. Eventually, in 1952, after their marriage, the Ayrtons moved to Bradfields, North Essex, which had been recommended to Michael by a friend in the Saville Club.
While Nigel was enduring all this domestic misery, one small incident stands out at the time which illustrates his character and integrity. When his wife's affair with Michael Ayrton became common knowledge at the Saville Club, outraged members proposed that he should be asked, or if necessary should be compelled, to resign his membership. Michael had been introduced to the Club by his father at the early age of fourteen, later becoming a full member at his coming of age, and it would have been a devastating blow for him to leave the Club, where he greatly valued his position and friends. Knowing this, Nigel could have effectively reaped his revenge by allowing events to take their course. Instead he quietly made it known the should such action be pursued, he himself would resign. Needless to say the motion was dropped.
During those bitter and difficult months, Nigel still continued his writing, and in 1951 A Way Through The Woods, his tenth novel and his fifth book in as many years, was published. This dealt, yet again, with a troubled relationship, and drew on his own experiences for this tale of a husband who condones his wife's infidelity in the hope that she might outgrow her infatuation. The work was successfully adapted for the stage by Ronald Millan, under its new title Waiting for Gillian, and starring husband and wife team Googie Withers and John McCallum it became one of the last plays to be staged at the St James's Theatre.
Finding London life impossible, Nigel moved back to the country, buying a converted oast house in Sussex, where he now continued writing full-time with less-frequent trips to London. Following the breakdown of his marriage, Nigel had several short-term relationships, but none developed beyond initial attraction, until he met Yovanka Tomich, a young Yugoslav refugee, whom he eventually married in 1953, and by whom he had two children.
Following the marriage he took on a new lease of creative life and produced three novels in the next three years. With Sundry Creditors in 1953, he demonstrated that, like Dickens and Norman Collins, he could work on a broad canvas. The novel chronicles the fortunes of a family-run engineering firm in the Midlands, with a host of convincingly-drawn characters, ranging from shop-floor workers to members of the Board.
Like many successful novelists, Nigel had by this time contributed a number of short stories to various leading magazines, although none of these had been collected between hard covers. His 1954 work, Last Recollections of my Uncle Charles, redressed the balance to a certain extent, being made up of fifteen stories featuring the loveable rogue of the title. Taken together, they form a warm and skilfully-drawn portrait of that perennially popular type, the 'born raconteur', and the book was yet another best-seller.
Now at the height of his powers, Nigel published yet another novel - his third in as many years - in 1955. The Fall of the Sparrow is a piece of textbook storytelling, tracing the inexorable downfall of a morally-weak public schoolboy who inspires loyalty in a small group of friends, even as he betrays their trust. The novel was successfully adapted for the small screen (although not by the author) and remains hugely enjoyable in its original form after more than four decades.
In 1955, Nigel left England for Hollywood where he spent the next seven years writing screenplays, during which time he averaged one produced screenplay a year - an impressive figure considering how few movie projects ever get off the ground - including his own A Sort of Traitors, imaginatively retitled Suspect by the Boulting brothers. His most notorious exploit was his collaboration on the first script for the great farce of Cleopatra. Although almost the entire body of his work on the project was eventually abandoned, he later took whimsical delight in including among his works 'the first folio edition of Cleopatra'. However, in spite of his success, Hollywood was bad for him in many ways. Although he saw a number of his screenplays produced, they were almost always the ones he valued least. The endless rewrites imposed by outsiders, who cared only for the latest fashions of the box office or the vagaries of the stars, were agony to a craftsman accustomed to making every word count in careful construction of plot and character, while the superficial glitter of the Hollywood lifestyle he found draining and depressing. All the old feelings of inadequacy returned, and he countered them disastrously by drinking. In Hollywood, drink of all kinds flowed freely; while never plumbing the depths of alcoholism, Nigel soon became bitterly aware that his drinking was becoming a problem. He hated it, he hated Hollywood, but he was unable to tear himself away.
Finally, in 1961, he roused himself to return to England and to novel writing. Seen Dimly Before Dawn, published in 1962, proved to his many admirers that screenwriting had sharpened rather than dulled his skills. This heady mixture of sexual awakening, intrigue and betrayal, related - perhaps surprisingly, considering that Nigel was 54 - from the viewpoint of a callow youth, was a tour de force. The book also contains a classic example of the way in which the experiences of his own life informed, but did not exactly match, his books. All his novels are to an extent autobiographical, and much can be learnt of the man and his life by reading them. But to assume that Balchin is present in his fiction - that his emotions and grievances are the sum total of his material - is to mistake the case, misread the texts, and undervalue his craftsmanship, his imagination, and ultimately his achievement.
Life was not kind to Nigel in the years that followed; his health broke down, partly due to his drinking, but also as the result of a serious gastric operation, which left him frail for a long time. His marriage to Yovanka was stormy and often difficult; he needed support and got it only erratically, while he failed to give her security and the social excitement she craved. They had two children, Charles and Cassandra, and he continued to see his daughters by Elizabeth, but he had never been very easy with children, and was the last man to relish the role of benevolent father and grandfather. Now in his late fifties, though physically aged beyond his years, he continued to write with great enthusiasm. His last two novels - In the Absence of Mrs Peterson (1966) and Kings of Infinite Space (1968) took him into fresh territory, while exploring his own experiences. In the Absence of Mrs Peterson is concerned with intrigue and adventure in Yugoslavia but, in passing, we are treated to as succinct a description (the narrator is a screenwriter) of the battle between artist and philistine as we are ever likely to encounter in print. He came full circle in his last novel, Kings of Infinite Space, not only returning to his roots but effectively bringing them up-to-date. This novel was, in effect his final interweaving of the human and the technical; his final consideration of the duality of Science and Art which had been a fundamental part of his whole life. In the end, despite his fascination with Science and all it could and should stand for, he gave the accolade to Art, and the invincible, intangible entity which has been called the human soul. Published a year before Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, the novel is narrated by Dr Frank Lewis who, at the age of 36, is plucked from his cosy Cambridge laboratory, seconded to NASA and subjected to training as an astronaut. Nigel, of course, was uniquely equipped to handle such a tale, which benefits both from his detailed technical understanding and his penetrating insight into the human psyche. As surely as he had recreated the world of the wartime research scientist in The Small Back Room, Nigel brought to life the world of the space race, and in doing so revealed how similar they remained.
Nigel Balchin died in London on 17 May 1970 at the age of 61 - full and often damaging years, which had burnt him out before his time. He left behind an impressive collection of books, covering a wide spectrum in themes and techniques. His reputation died almost as soon, as he died, but he remains a discovery which many people make, and the popularity of a handful of his books, especially The Small Back Room, continues. This novel introduced to English fiction the workings of the empirical scientific mind. Indeed, it was largely through his work, and that of another contemporary, Nevil Shute, that the British, emerging from the War, had much of an idea how they had won it. In that it is a novel tied essentially to its time. But to the battle which Sammy Rice wages against himself no date can be attached. The struggle goes on. What would have pleased him are the tributes of fellow writers: of Dick Francis, who on one occasion named him his favourite author; of Elizabeth Jane Howard whose first novel he read and approved in manuscript, and who speaks of him as an example to modern novelists; and of William Golding, who applauded his instinct for character and plot. On his death, tributes appeared in both the London and New York Times. It may at first seem incongruous that a scientist - by definition a seeker after truth - should also be a teller of tales, and yet who better to subject mankind to the harsh unrelenting scrutiny of the microscope, especially when, as in the case of Balchin, the lens of that microscope has been coated with more than a dash of humanity.
The writer, Rosalie Hooper, would like to express her grateful thanks to Justine Hopkins, Nigel Balchin's granddaughter, for her help.

To listen to a recent BBC Radio 4 Programme on Nigel Balchin click here

Click here to see a cartoon drawing of Nigel Balchin and a poem called 'The Fortunes of Nigel'

Click here to see an index to Nigel Balchin's Books and Screenplays

Click here to see Grave Stone of Nigel Balchin