White did well enough in school to earn an Exhibition in English to St Catharine's College, Cambridge in 1941, and studied there until enrolling in the Royal Navy in 1943 to fight in World War II.

After initially putting to sea helping to ferry men and supplies across the English Channel, White joined the Welsh Guards, where he served until the end of the war.

White's Egyptology studies earned him an offer to work for the Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Department at the British Museum, but he opted instead to become a story editor for the newly created BBC Television Service, where he read scripts and worked on episodes of his own, including serial adaptations of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford and his own Witch Hunt, famous - or notorious - for depicting the first, if brief, scene of a group of men and women, all naked, engaged in sexual congress.

After a brief stint in the British Foreign Service, White went back to writing for television and film, including five years spent travelling and living in places such as Madrid and Paris, as a script doctor with Samuel Bronston Productions.

In 1967 White left screenwriting and the UK behind to move to the United States and become writer-in-residence at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he began the school's creative writing department and eventually became a full professor.