[6] After leaving Oxford University, he began his career as a film and stage actor, appearing with the Birmingham Rep and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre as well as in the West End play While Parents Sleep.

During World War II, he worked as an announcer for the BBC Forces Programme for two years and then joined the Royal Signal Corps, with whom he served in North Africa, Italy, and London.

[6][7] After the war, he joined the BBC drama department, initially working on the production of the soap opera The Robinson Family and then producing and directing the Dick Barton - Special Agent series which regularly obtained 20,000,000 listeners daily.

He went on to become a producer and director for the BBC Third Programme, where his output included 17 Shakespeare plays, the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus; The Wasps and Lysistrata by Aristophanes; and The Bacchae, Medea and Hippolytus by Euripides.

He also introduced British radio audiences to less frequently performed Elizabethan and Jacobean dramas, Restoration comedies, and works by 20th century authors such as Robert Graves and Jean Anouilh.