Peter Luke did not write his first play until he was nearly forty and, after his one and only stage success, retired to free-lance writing in Spain. The son of Sir Harry Luke--a writer--and Joyce Fremlin Luke, Peter Ambrose Cyprian Luke was born in St. Albans in Hertfordshire and educated at Eton and the Byam Shaw school of art in London as well as the Atelier André Lhote in Paris. Before he could involve himself professionally in painting, World War II intervened, and he served from 1940 to 1946 with the Rifle Brigade in the Middle East, Italy, and the second front in France. After the war he worked briefly as a news subeditor for Reuters News Service (1946-1947), and then went into the wine trade for ten years. He married Carola Peyton-Jones. After her death, he married Lettice Crawshaw, with whom he had a son and daughter; the...