He first became associated with the theatre as a member of the Footlights Dramatic Society while reading medicine at Caius College, Cambridge.
Among his stage credits in the 1920s were Charlot's Revue (1925 and 1927, with Beatrice Lillie and Gertrude Lawrence) and Good Morning, Bill (1928), in which his understudy was William Hartnell.
[5] He entered films in the mid-1920s, wrote several plays,[1] and in 1935 became the first actor to portray Dorothy L. Sayers' fictional detective Lord Peter Wimsey on screen.
In 1947, after war service, he co-starred with Robertson Hare in the West End comedy She Wanted a Cream Front Door.
In 1952 he appeared in Lord Arthur Savile's Crime at the Court Theatre, and the following year he formed his own company, assuming the management of the Hippodrome in Aldershot and presenting weekly repertory.