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Nigel Balchin was a famed British satirist who published novels, articles, and wrote screenplays. After graduating with honors from Cambridge, Balchin worked as an orchard farmer. This experience became fodder for many satires for Punch magazine. These articles in turn were compiled and published as a book, for which Balchin used the pen name Mark Spade. In 1933 he began writing novels. His wartime satire The Small Back Room (1943) was particularly popular and was adapted into a film in 1948. He began writing screenplays alone or with others in 1947 and often adapted the writings of other authors. Balchin served as a scientific adviser to the British Army Council during WW II.