In the camp he learned German by talking with the guards, and he designed the sets for the prisoners' productions of Macbeth and other plays, making highly imaginative use of the limited resources available to him.
He later wrote of his teenage years that "claustrophobic family life and the cocoon of public schools at that time" had made him what an acquaintance described as "a nice English schoolboy.
He entered the theatrical world at the lowest rung of the ladder, serving tea in the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London.
Yates left the Carl Rosa Company to join the BBC, where his more notable productions were Heidi (1953) and Troilus and Cressida (1954).
He won a Guild of Television Producers and Directors award in 1954 for his BBC production of Amahl and the Night Visitors.
In the early 1950s, BBC Television was not deeply committed to visual design, and seemed to Yates to be more concerned with efficiency than aesthetics in its production.