Nigel Balchin
| Nigel Balchin | |
|---|---|
Nigel Balchin, c 1957
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| Born |
3 December 1908 Potterne, Wiltshire, England |
| Died | 17 May 1970 (aged 61) Hampstead, London, England |
| Pen name | Mark Spade (occasional alongside own name) |
| Occupation | Psychologist, author |
Nigel Balchin (3 December 1908 – 17 May 1970) was an English novelist and screenwriter 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.
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.
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.
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