Nigel Balchin

Life

He was born Nigel Marlin Balchin in Potterne, Wiltshire, to William and Ada Balchin. He was educated at Dauntsey's School and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he took a scholarship and became a Prizeman in Natural Sciences. He then worked for the National Institute of Industrial Psychology between 1930 and 1935. For part of this time he was a consultant to JS Rowntree & Sons, where he was involved in the design and marketing of Black Magic chocolates and, he claimed, responsible for the success of the company's Aero and Kit Kat brands.

He wrote for Punch magazine, published three non-fiction books as Mark Spade, and also wrote novels under his own name. During World War II he was a civil servant at the Ministry of Food, and then Deputy Scientific Adviser to the Army Council, with the rank of brigadier.

In 1956, he moved abroad to write screenplays in Hollywood and elsewhere, but was increasingly troubled by alcoholism, and returned permanently to England in 1962. He died in 1970 at a nursing home in Hampstead, London, and is buried on the edge of the north path in Hampstead Cemetery in north London. His gravestone is small, but distinctive, having the form of an open book.

Writing

His novels enjoyed great popular success for a time. Darkness Falls from the Air is set during the London Blitz and was written while the bombing was still in progress. The Small Back Room became a Powell and Pressburger film. A Way Through the Wood was adapted as a stage play, Waiting for Gillian, and as the 2005 film Separate Lies, which marked the directorial debut of Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes. Other critically acclaimed Balchin novels include A Sort of Traitors, Sundry Creditors, The Fall of the Sparrow and Seen Dimly before Dawn.

As a screenwriter he worked on an early draft of Cleopatra but is principally remembered for The Man Who Never Was, for which he won the 1957 BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay, and Mandy, the story of a deaf child. He also wrote the screenplay for The Singer Not the Song and adapted two of his own novels for the screen.

Family

Balchin was married twice, firstly in 1933 to Elisabeth Evelyn Walshe, daughter of the novelist Douglas Walshe) whom he had met at Cambridge where she was reading English, archaeology and anthropology at Newnham with children:

1. Prudence Ann Balchin (born 1934), who married Z-Cars scriptwriter John Hopkins and ran a successful zoo for many years.
2. Penelope Jane Balchin (born 1937), better known as childcare expert Dr Penelope Leach, who married the noted science journalist Gerald Leach (1933–2004).
3. Freja Mary Balchin (born 1944), who became the first female president of Cambridge University's theatre group and married Richard Gregory, a leading psychologist.

His first marriage broke up following a partner-swapping arrangement between the Balchins, the artist Michael Ayrton and the latter's partner Joan. Balchin divorced Elisabeth in 1951 and she married Ayrton a year later.

He married secondly in 1953 Yovanka (now Jane.) Zorana Tomich, with children:

1. Charles Zoran Marlin Balchin (born 1955), who is a leading figure in the world of sport and television having held senior roles at the BBC, Sky Sports and various overseas broadcasters.
2. Cassandra Marlin Balchin (1962–2012), who was an authority on women's rights under Islamic law.