Educated at Eton and Harrow and Oxford and Cambridge. Joined the Royal Engineers as a motorcycle despach rider in 1914; Captain in the Intelligence Corps in WWI (DSO in Jan 1918); also a playwright and performer as part of the '5WA Radio Players'. His plays include 'GHQ at Kwang-Loo', 'The Fog in the Bog', 'Disclosure (a thriller, with O Wyndham)', and 'The Man who saw the Future (a comedy)'.

He and Sidney St Barbe, in a D.H. Moth, started a tour of 14 European countries in July 1927, and flew to France, Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia, Austria and Hungary. However, as they tried to take off from Budapest on 6 August, "their machine went wrong" and they crashed, "breaking the wheels of the aeroplane" but escaping unhurt.

He invented, and then became the first Director of, the Aviation branch of the Autombile Association (hence his Moth's registration G-AAAA), a Member of the Aerodromes Advisory Board, and Deputy Chairman (with Nigel Norman) of the Civil Aviation Section of the London Chamber of Commerce.

CG Grey reckoned that he had "an innate love of law, order and decency".