Clive King was born in Richmond, Surrey England on 24 April 1924 and grew up in Ash, Kent. He was educated at the King's School, Rochester, Kent from 1933 to 1941 and then at Downing College, Cambridge from 1941 to 1943, graduating with a BA in English. From 1943 to 1946 He served as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, which took him to the Arctic, India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Australia, Malaya and Japan, where he saw the then recent devastation of Hiroshima.