[1] Rodd followed no specific career and his views were erratic and changeable; having joined the British Union of Fascists in 1933, by the following year he was fiercely denouncing the movement.

[6] He was commissioned into the Welsh Guards in 1939,[7] and during a varied war career saw service in Africa and Italy, attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

[8][1] He was a major in the Welsh Guards reserve of officers, with the honorary rank of lieutenant-colonel, from 1951[9] until he reached the age limit in 1954.

[10] After the war he attempted unsuccessfully to become a film-maker; his one completed project, For Whom the Gate Tolls, shot in Spain, was a failure.

[15] Nancy, who was called "unabashedly snobbish and devastatingly witty"[13] and her family nicknamed him "Prodd" or "the old toll-gater", from his skill at talking at great length on historical subjects such as turnpike roads.