Darlow's documentary, drama and arts programmes have won international awards including BAFTAs, an Emmy, and Gold at the New York Television Festival.
His works include The World At War episode Genocide, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Johnny Cash at San Quentin and Bomber Harris.
Through his mother he met Esme Church, who ran an acting and liberal arts school in Bradford, largely for working-class students from northern England.
Although he passed an audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he decided to attend Church’s school instead, which had a “socialist feeling” that he appreciated.
[2] Following his graduation from Church’s school, Darlow performed his National Service by serving as a radar officer in the Royal Air Force.
As a side activity, Darlow helped found a small company of actors who put on new plays on Sunday nights.
He wrote and directed a documentary film entitled All These People (1960) about the history of the city of Reading and then another, The Holloway Road, about that thoroughfare in London.
During the early 1960s, he acted for about a year in the West End production of Bonne Suppe, a play starring Coral Browne.
He went on to work at Granada TV, where he was the associate producer of Ten Days that Shook the World, a 1967 documentary marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
[6] He directed two episodes of the comprehensive 26-part documentary series The World at War (1974), narrated by Laurence Olivier and produced by Thames Television.
In connection with a television program he directed about Oman, he and Richard Fawkes co-wrote The Last Corner of Arabia, a non-fiction book about that country.