Hailed by John Betjeman as ‘one of our dozen readable living writers of genius’, Nigel Balchin was one of the best-known English novelists of the Second World War generation: few writers so tangibly convey the excitement and terror of Blitz-era Britain. Little wonder that Balchin’s books, among them Mine Own Executioner and The Small Back Room, were seized upon by film-makers of the calibre of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Never previously the subject of a biography, Balchin was not only a brilliant novelist and BAFTA-winning screenwriter: he was also largely responsible for the success of Black Magic chocolates. Yet his alcoholism and tormented love life ensured that his writing became increasingly uneven. Like Patrick Hamilton before him, Balchin drifted into obscurity but his compelling novels continue to be rediscovered by a new generation of fans, including Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes and best-selling author Philippa Gregory. Derek Collett’s groundbreaking biography fills an important gap in the history of twentieth century fiction.

Derek Collett was born on the western fringes of London in 1965. He was brought up in Oxfordshire and still lives in the county today. Educated at his local comprehensive and at Southampton University, he obtained a degree in Chemistry and has worked in scientific, technical and medical publishing for almost 30 years, latterly in a freelance capacity.

Derek read his first Nigel Balchin novel, The Small Back Room, in 1991 and has been obsessively reading and re-reading the author’s works ever since. In recent years he has used his love of Balchin’s fiction as the springboard to launch a new career for himself as a literary writer and His Own Executioner: The Life of Nigel Balchin represents the first significant fruit of those labours.

Nigel Balchin looked like a film star, designed the Black Magic box and wrote some of the greatest novels of the Forties, including the classic The Small Back Room, which was translated to the screen by no less than Powell and Pressburger. Yet few remember him as well as they do his contemporaries Graham Greene and Eric Ambler. Derek Collett states that his aim is to resurrect this brilliant and troubled man from history's amnesia and here's hoping this riveting and revealing biography will place him back where he belongs, on the bookshelves of immortality.
– Cathi Unsworth, author of Without The Moon

A first-rate biography.
– David Collard, in Literary Review, Issue 438 (December 2015/January 2016)

– DJ Taylor, in The Times Literary Supplement, 18–25 December 2015 Issue