[1] Born in Eltham[2] to a formerly affluent family which was severely affected by the Wall Street crash in 1929, Jackson's formal education was ended by his father's long-term illness and early death.
[3] He joined the GPO Film Unit on his 17th birthday as a messenger boy after his mother persuaded her MP, Sir Kingsley Wood, then also postmaster general, to find work for her son.
[1][4] For what became a three-year project, Jackson took on the writing, direction, editing and casting (of non-professional actors) a film about merchant seamen.
[6] After the war, Jackson spent three years in Hollywood under contract to MGM,[1] although the only film he directed during this period was Shadow on the Wall (1950), based on the novel Death in the Doll's House by Lawrence P. Bachmann and Hannah Leessuch.
Impressed by the stage work of Patrick McGoohan, he seems to have been involved in casting him for Danger Man (US:Secret Agent), episodes of which he directed.