He was born in Sale, Cheshire, to Methodist parents; his father owned a small furniture shop. At Manchester Grammar School his affinity for Sir Thomas More first developed. After leaving school aged sixteen, he worked in an insurance office, which he disliked; after studying in the evening for five weeks he passed three A-levels and went on to attend the University of Manchester, from which, after a year, he undertook wartime service, initially as a pilot officer candidate in the RAF (air-sickness preventing him from continuing past training) from 1943 to 1946. He then served as an Army officer in West Africa until 1947, when he returned to the University of Manchester and spent three years completing his honours degree in History. Following this, he took a teaching diploma from the University of Exeter. For many years he taught English and history at Millfield School and only became a full-time writer at the age of 33 when his play "The Flowering Cherry" was staged in London in 1958, with Celia Johnson and Ralph Richardson.