Themes of individual novels range from the paradoxes of freedom (The Voyage, The River Line), through passionate love seen from within (Portrait in a Mirror) and without (A Breeze of Morning), to the conflict of good and evil (The Judge's Story) and the enchanted boundary of death (Sparkenbroke).

He was educated at the Naval Colleges of Osborne and Dartmouth and served as a midshipman in the China Fleet until 1913 when he returned to England to take the entrance examinations for Oxford.

After an unsuccessful relationship with Mary, a daughter of Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett, he married the Welsh novelist Hilda Vaughan in 1923.

They had two children: Dame Shirley Paget, Marchioness of Anglesey, and Roger Morgan, who became Librarian of the House of Lords Library.

It has banished tragedy from our theatre, eloquence from our debates, glory from our years of peace, splendour from our wars…" The character Gerard Challis in Stella Gibbons's Westwood is thought to be a caricature of him.

His posthumous reputation was initially higher in France than in Britain,[3] but has begun a new rise in recent years with the republication of various novels (including Capuchin Classics' The Voyage with an Introduction by Oxford's Valentine Cunningham in 2009), his poetry (edited by Peter Holland for Scarthin Books in 2008) and an edition of his plays published by Oberon Books in 2013.