[2][3][4] Storry was born in Doncaster, son of Frank Spencer Storry, manager of the London Joint Stock Bank on Doncaster High Street, and Kate, née Roberts.
In 1937, upon the advice of one of his tutors at Oxford, Edmund Blunden, Storry was appointed lecturer in English at Otaru Higher Commercial School in Hokkaido, Japan, a post he held until 1940.
During the Second World War he served in the Intelligence Corps in the Middle East, Singapore, India and Burma.
He commanded a mobile section of the South East Asia Translation and Interrogation Centre during the 1944 Battle of Imphal.
He was then elected to a Roger Heyworth Memorial Research Fellowship at St Antony's College, Oxford.