Acton was educated at Rugby School and later studied natural sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge, although he left in 1936 without taking his degree.
Having tried unsuccessfully to run it as a country house hotel, he eventually sold the property, and it is now part of the National Botanic Gardens.
He listened to concerts on BBC Radio[3] and, in his early twenties, he visited Munich where he saw Richard Strauss and Hans Knappertsbusch conduct.
Columnist Kevin Myers described him at the end of a concert "mop[ping] the tears from his large round cheeks with an even larger white handkerchief".
As a result of his lobbying of Radio Éireann, Cork became the home of the first resident string quartet of any broadcasting station in the world.
[7] Although he retired officially as music critic at The Irish Times in 1987, Acton continued as an occasional concert reviewer for a further two years alongside his successor, Michael Dervan.
[8] For many years, Acton also wrote articles on musical life in Ireland for Éire-Ireland, the quarterly journal of the Irish American Cultural Institute.