He was educated at Kendal Grammar School and Queen's College, Oxford, and served in the Foreign Office and Ministry of Labour during the First World War.

He stood unsuccessfully as a Labour candidate for Northwich in July 1945, but on 16 November of that year he was raised to the peerage as Baron Chorley, of Kendal in the County of Westmorland.

He was active in the Association of University Teachers, serving as president in 1947–1948 and as honorary general secretary from 1953 to 1965.

She would later contribute to C. E. M. Joad's 1948 work The English Counties Illustrated, by writing the chapters on Westmorland and Cumberland.

He died in January 1978, aged 82, and was succeeded in the barony by his eldest son Roger.