Butcher was born on 31 July 1909, in
Suffolk, England. In 1930, the magazine
Film Weekly sponsored a pair of film acting scholarships. The two winners (Cyril Butcher and
Aileen Despard) went on to appear in the now lost
Alfred Hitchcock short
An Elastic Affair and placed under contract by
British International Pictures. In the early 1930s, he met novelist and playwright
Beverley Nichols and they remained lifelong partners from then. Their friends were
Hugh Walpole and
Lord Berners, among others. In 1939 Butcher was living with Nichols and a valet at 1 Ellerdale Close, Hampstead, London. In 1934, he published
In Extremis, Worst Moments in the Lives of the Famous with a foreword by Beverley Nichols. In 1939, together with
Albert Arlen, he directed the play
Counterfeit! at the Duke of York's, London. In 1953, Butcher adapted
Evensong by Beverley Nichols for the television, while in 1956 he directed the television adaptation of
Macadam and Eve from the play by
Roger Macdougall. Butcher was the producer of the 1957 television drama
Granite Peak. Between 1959 and 1963, he directed for television:
Ideal Home Exhibition (1963),
The English Captain (1960),
The Last Hours (1959),
Old People; Part 1 (1959) and
Election Results 1959 (1959). Butcher and Nichols shared a home together – Sudbrook Cottage at
Ham Common in
Richmond, Surrey. Butcher died Sudbrook Cottage on 23 February 1987, aged 77. ==References==