He attended Norwich Grammar School and then went up to St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he studied history.
[1] He served with the 8th Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment during World War I, initially as an infantryman, but he was soon commissioned as a temporary officer.
After the war he worked for British Industrial Films Limited, still living in Ealing with his wife.
[1] Critic A.C. Ward praised Bretherton as "an adventure-mystery war-novel with an admirably ingenious and leak-proof plot.
This book combines a brilliant exercise of creative imagination with a remarkable ability to reproduce, vividly, first-hand experiences, and there is one brief battle-scene…which is memorable."