1. Nigel Marlin Balchin was an English psychologist and author, particularly known for his novels written during and immediately after World War II: Darkness Falls from the Air, The Small Back Room and Mine Own Executioner.
14 Facts About Nigel Balchin
1. 2.
Nigel Balchin's paternal grandfather, George Marlin Balchin, was a farmer of 800 acres from a long line of wealthy Surrey farmers in Milford.
3.
George Nigel Balchin moved during the 1870s to Reading to become a Storekeeper.
4.
At the age of eighteen months, Nigel Balchin knocked over a kettle of scalding water, and was so badly burned that he was not expected to survive.
5.
Nigel Balchin was educated at Dauntsey's School and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he took a scholarship and became a Prizeman in Natural Sciences.
6.
Nigel Balchin then worked for the National Institute of Industrial Psychology between 1930 and 1935.
7.
Nigel Balchin wrote about the changes in his home village of Potterne and nearby areas on a revisit for The Sunday Times Magazine's Return Journey series published on 6 August 1964.
8.
Nigel Balchin divorced Elisabeth in 1951 and she married Ayrton a year later.
9.
Nigel Balchin included an unflattering caricature of Darnton as the poet Stephen Ryle in his novel Darkness Falls from the Air.
10.
Nigel Balchin died on 17 May 1970 at a nursing home in Hampstead, London, and is buried on the edge of the north path in Hampstead Cemetery in north London.
11.
Nigel Balchin's gravestone is small, but distinctive, having the form of an open book.
12.
Nigel Balchin wrote articles for Punch and The Aeroplane magazine, and published three non-fiction books as Mark Spade.
13.
Nigel Balchin wrote novels under his own name, and enjoyed great popular success for a time.
14.
Nigel Balchin wrote the screenplay for The Singer Not the Song and adapted two of his own novels for the screen.