John Hopkins (1931–1998) and ran a zoo for many years. Penelope Jane Balchin (born 1937), better known as childcare expert Dr Penelope Leach, who married the science journalist Gerald Leach (1933–2004). Freja Mary Balchin (born 1944), who became the first female president of Cambridge University's theatre group and married Professor Richard Gregory (1923–2010), a psychologist. His first marriage broke up following a partner-swapping arrangement between the Balchins, the artist Michael Ayrton and the latter's partner Joan. Elisabeth also had an affair with the composer Christian Darnton. Balchin divorced Elisabeth in 1951 and she married Ayrton a year later. Balchin included an unflattering caricature of Darnton as the poet Stephen Ryle in his novel Darkness Falls from the Air (1942). Secondly, in February 1953 at Marylebone, he married Yovanka (later Jane) Zorana Tomich. They had two children: Charles Zoran Marlin Balchin (born 1955), who held senior roles at the BBC, Sky Sports and various overseas broadcasters. Cassandra Marlin Balchin (1962–2012), an authority on women's rights under Islamic law. He died on 17 May 1970 at a nursing home in Hampstead, London, and is buried on the edge of the north path in Hampstead Cemetery in north London. His gravestone is small, but distinctive, having the form of an open book. Ancestors Writing Balchin wrote articles for Punch and The Aeroplane magazine, and published three non-fiction books as Mark Spade. He also wrote novels under his own name, and enjoyed great popular success for a time. Darkness Falls from the Air is set during the London Blitz and was written while the bombing was still in progress. The Small Back Room became a Powell and Pressburger film of the same title. A Way Through the Wood was adapted as a stage play, Waiting for Gillian, and as the 2005 film Separate Lies, which marked the directorial debut of Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes. Other critically acclaimed Balchin novels include A Sort of Traitors, Sundry Creditors, The Fall of the Sparrow and Seen Dimly before Dawn. As a screenwriter he worked on an early draft of Cleopatra but is principally remembered for The Man Who Never Was, for which he won the 1957 BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay, and Mandy, the story of a deaf child. He also wrote the screenplay for The Singer Not the Song and adapted two of his own novels for the screen. Bibliography Magazine Articles by Nigel Balchin