Born in Hampstead, Ian Scott-Kilvert was educated at Harrow School, for whom he played cricket,[2] and Caius College, Cambridge,[3] where he gained a first in English literature.
At the start of World War II he was a pacifist, serving in the western desert for the Friends' Ambulance Service.
[4] He later joined the army: parachuted into Epirus as a SOE officer in 1944, he successfully took control of his district for the Allies as the Germans retreated.
[6] He was on the council and committee of the Anglo-Hellenic League and joint chairman of both the British and the international Byron Society.
The series eventually included hundreds of items, and Scott Kilvert himself contributed treatments of A. E. Housman and John Webster.