One of the most distinguished of the English novelists who began their careers immediately following World War II is Percy Howard Newby. His sizable body of work is notable for seriousness of themes, mastery of fictional techniques and contrasting modes, originality of characterization, and a style which--at once precise and suggestive, graceful and powerful--is capable of the subtlest as well as the broadest effects.

Newby was born on 25 June 1918 to Percy and Isabel Bryant Newby in Crowborough, a town in Sussex, but he was brought up in various places in the Midlands and South Wales because his father, a tradesman, had "an itch to keep moving." Newby attended Hanley Castle Grammar School, Worcester, and, from 1936 to 1938, Saint Paul's College, Cheltenham. He has stated that as long as he can remember he has been a reader of novels. He was fascinated by character and, until he was about eighteen...