[3] In 1940, Clavell joined the Royal Artillery, and received an emergency Regular Army commission as a second lieutenant on 10 May 1941.
[4] Though trained for desert warfare, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 he was sent to Singapore to fight the Japanese.
The ship taking his unit was sunk en route to Singapore, and the survivors were picked up by a Dutch boat fleeing to India.
The commander, described by Clavell years later as a "total twit", insisted that they be dropped off at the nearest port to fight the war despite having no weapons.
[5]Prisoners were fed a quarter of a pound (110 g) of rice per day, one egg per week and occasional vegetables.
[5] After the war, Clavell was promoted to war-substantive lieutenant, with effect from 1 August 1942,[7] and to temporary captain on 10 June 1946,[7] A motorcycle crash, however, ended his military career.
[8] He enrolled with the University of Birmingham, where he met April Stride, an actress, whom he married in 1949 (date of marriage sometimes given as 1951).
"[10] It was later sold to Fox where it attracted the attention of Robert L. Lippert, who hired Clavell to write the science-fiction horror movie The Fly (1958).
In 1960, Clavell had written a Broadway show with John Sturges, White Alice, a thriller set in the Arctic.
[10] In 1961, Clavell announced he had formed his own company, Cee Productions, who would make the films King Rat, White Alice and No Hands on the Clock.
[17] In 1962, Clavell signed a multi picture contract with a Canadian company to produce and direct two films there, Circle of Greed and The Sweet and the Bitter.
He wrote, produced and directed To Sir, with Love (1967), featuring Sidney Poitier and based on E. R. Braithwaite's semiautobiographical 1959 book.
Clavell was heavily involved in the 1980 miniseries which starred Richard Chamberlain and achieved huge ratings.
In the late 1970s he spent three years researching and writing his fourth novel, Noble House (1981), set in Hong Kong in 1963.
[26] Clavell briefly returned to filmmaking and directed a thirty-minute adaptation of his novelette The Children's Story.
His next novel, Tai-Pan (1966), was a fictional account of Jardine Matheson's successful career in Hong Kong,[29] as told via the character who was to become Clavell's heroic archetype, Dirk Struan.
[33] Clavell's fourth novel, Noble House (1981), became a best-seller that year and was adapted into a TV miniseries in 1988.
Peter Marlowe is Clavell's author surrogate[5] and a character of the novels King Rat and Noble House (1981); he is also mentioned once (as a friend of Andrew Gavallan's) in Whirlwind (1986).
In Noble House Marlowe is mentioned as having written a novel about Changi which, although fictionalised, is based on real events (like those in King Rat).
"[38] Between 1970 and 1990, Clavell lived at Fredley Manor near Mickleham, located in Surrey in South East England.
[40][41][42][43] Clavell had an affair with Caroline Naylen Barrett, who was born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother and an American G.I.
[46] The library was later closed pending the opening of a new facility in Salisbury, Wiltshire;[47] however, James Clavell Square on the Royal Arsenal development on Woolwich riverside remains.