Editing Stephen Potter (section)

==Biography==

===Early years===
Potter was born in [[Battersea]], London, the only son  of Frank Collard Potter (1858–1939), a chartered accountant, and his wife Elizabeth Mary Jubilee ''née'' Reynolds (1863–1950).<ref name=dnb>Grenfell, Joyce, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35585 "Potter, Stephen Meredith (1900–1969)’"], rev. Clare L. Taylor, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, October 2008, accessed 22 May 2010 (requires subscription)</ref> He attended [[Westminster School]] from age 13 to 18, during the [[First World War]]. As he reached school-leaving age he wrote in his diary, "If this war doesn't end soon I shall have to join the beastly army and lay down my blooming life for my blinking country."<ref>Potter's diary, ''quoted'' in Davis, Russell, "The master-shipwright", ''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'', 17 October 1980, p. 1185</ref> He volunteered for the army, was trained as an officer and "passed out" (graduated) as top of his company. He was commissioned into the [[Coldstream Guards]] as a second lieutenant just as the war was ending, and did not see active service.<ref name=tls>Davis, Russell, "The master-shipwright", review of  biography of Potter by Alan Jenkins, ''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'', 17 October 1980, p. 1185</ref>

Potter was demobilised in 1919, and spent a few months in his father's office learning book-keeping, before going to [[Merton College, Oxford]], to study English.<ref name="MCreg">{{cite book|editor1-last=Levens|editor1-first=R.G.C.|title=Merton College Register 1900-1964|date=1964|publisher=Basil Blackwell|location=Oxford|pages=118–119}}</ref> His family paid for his university education, a fact that put him in the shadow of{{clarify|date=September 2017}} his elder sister Muriel (later a form mistress at [[St Paul's Girls' School]], then headmistress of [[South Hampstead High School]]),<ref>Imogen Holst: A Life in Music, Christopher Grogan, 2007, The Boydell Press, pg 17</ref><ref>The A.M.A.: The Journal of the Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools, Volume 31, Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools., 1936, pg 316</ref> who had won a scholarship to [[St Hugh's College, Oxford]],<ref>Oxford University Gazette, volume 51, 1920, Oxford University Press, pg 134</ref> and had taken a first-class degree. Potter achieved only a second-class degree in English language and literature.<ref name=dnb/> On the strength of this he was offered the post of talks producer at the [[BBC]], but turned it down as it was based in the provincial city of [[Birmingham]], where he had no wish to reside.<ref name=tls/> Potter instead tried to earn a living as an elocution teacher in London, advertising "Cockney accents cured", but attracted only one pupil.<ref name=tls/> He then tried his luck as a tutor and schoolmaster before becoming private secretary to a well-known playwright, [[Henry Arthur Jones]].<ref name=dnb/>