Acclaimed Author. Born in Potterne in Wiltshire, the youngest son of a shop owner. He was educated at Dauntsey’s School in the nearby town of Devizes and at Peterhouse in Cambridge, where he obtained a First Class Honours degree in Natural Sciences. His first job was as a consultant to Rowntree’s Chocolate in York, where he thought up the name for the Kit-Kat bar and had the idea for Aero. In 1933, he married Elizabeth Walsh, whom he had met at Cambridge and with whom he had three daughters, the middle of whom became Dr. Penelope Leach, the well-known writer on child care. During the War, Nigel Balchin served as the Deputy Scientific Adviser to the Army Council, rising to the rank of Brigadier. His marriage ended in divorce in 1951, Miss Walsh going on to marry the artist and illustrator Michael Ayrton, and Balchin marrying Yovanka Tomich, a refugee from Yugoslavia, with whom he had a son and a daughter. Nigel Balchin was the author of eighteen books, in addition to two satires under the pseudonym of Mark Spade. The best-known are “The Small Back Room”, which was filmed by Powell and Pressburger, and “Mine Own Executioner”, which was made into a film with Burgess Meredith in the leading role, as a psychiatrist. This was described by Leslie Halliwell as “the first adult drama featuring sophisticated people to emerge from a British studio”. In addition, Balchin worked on the first draft of “Cleopatra” with Elizabeth Taylor in the title role, but very little of his dialogue remained in the finished script. The epitaph on his tombstone, “Lord I was afraid”, is the title of another of his books, published in 1947. Nigel Balchin died at his home, 48 Regents Park Road, London NW1. (bio by: Iain MacFarlaine)