John Whiting, whose career as a dramatist began when he was thirty-three and ended with his death twelve years later, aroused some reverberating controversy as a serious contemporary playwright. Born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, he was the son of Dorothy Edith Herring Whiting and Charles Frederick Whiting, an army officer who later became a lawyer. Whiting was educated at Taunton School in Somerset and later studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1934 to 1936. The military element in Whiting's background, supplemented in adult life by his own wartime service from 1939 to 1944, combined with his training as an actor and early years in repertory to form the major creative inspiration of his writing.

He had, at the war's outbreak, registered as a conscientious objector; the fascination of war and the military character never blinded him to man's insane drive to self-immolation through conquest. It is epitomized in Marching Song...