Pseudonym of Cecil William Mercer. He was educated at Harrow and Oxford. He then became a barrister. He took to writing to supplement his earnings at the Bar. In the First World War he contracted muscular rheumatism which lasted all his life. He was invalided home and spent the rest of the war in a desk job. He found very little work at the Bar and started to write seriously for a living. He moved to Southern France but at the start of the Second World War he retreated to Southern Rodhesia. He married an American actress but divorced her in 1933 and married an English girl in 1934. He also wrote romantic and humorous comedy.