Born in Hammersmith, London, where he spent most of his life and which he frequently painted.  An attack of polio as a child badly affected one leg so he attended Brook Green School for crippled children.  At the age of fifteen he won a scholarship to the Hammersmith School of Art, another scholarship in 1930 taking him to the Royal College of Art for four year under William Rotherstein.
Essentially an English painter in the Sickert tradition, his working class background was reflected in his pictures of seedy back streets and bar room life.
An important painter, he painted many portraits, including Winston Churchill, Princess Anne, Margaret Thatcher, Lord Hailsham, Lord Olivier et al.