During the Second World War, he joined the Royal Tank Regiment, fought in Italy and rose to the rank of Captain.

[1] He was the son of Philip Woolf and his wife Barbara Lownds, brought up on the Rothschild Waddesdon estate where his father was the manager.

He was educated at Stowe School, and then enlisted in the Royal Tank Regiment at the age of sixteen, fighting in the Italian campaign and rising to the rank of Captain.

[2] Woolf was the husband of biographer Jean Moorcroft Wilson, who was general editor of the "War Poets" series of monographs that he published.

[3] He was himself named after his father's brother, Cecil Nathan Sidney Woolf, who wrote poetry and was killed at Cambrai in the First World War.