Nigel Balchin
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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. 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-Pressburger film. A Way Through the Wood was adapted as a stage play Waiting for Gillian, and as the 2005 film Separate Lies. 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 (1960)
- 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
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