Morton was born in
Suffolk, the son of a Yorkshire farmer. He had two siblings, a sister Kathleen and a brother Max. He attended school in
Bury St Edmunds until he was 16 and then at boarding school in
Eastbourne. He then studied the English tripos at
Peterhouse, Cambridge, from 1921 to 1924, graduating with a third-class degree. While at Cambridge, he developed friends from within the
university Labour club, including
Allen Hutt who became a typographer and
Ivor Montagu who was later active in the film industry. He encountered socialist ideas, moving towards the
communist group at the university around
Maurice Dobb. After college he taught at
Steyning Grammar School in Sussex, where under his influence, most of the staff supported the
General Strike in 1926. Dismissed as a consequence, he taught for a year at
A.S. Neill's progressive school,
Summerhill at that time in
Lyme Regis. He then moved to London to write and run a bookshop in
Finsbury Circus. In 1929 he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and along with his wife, Vivien, remained a member for the rest of his life. Vivien was the daughter of the socialist
Thomas A. Jackson. "
Nineteen Eighty-Four is, for this country at least, the last word to date in counter-revolutionary apologetics," he wrote. ==Library==