Hill was born in Stourbridge,
Worcestershire, England to Ernest and Agnes Hill. His father was a farmer. He was brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon and attended Warwick School. He reported he "played a great deal of sport when younger." He lived in Europe during and between the wars, and became fluent in German. After a period in which he lived "in an ancient mill-house where the original water wheel ground the charcoal for some of the first gunpowder used for lethal purposes in Europe" he came to reside in London. Hill married Marjorie Potter on 1 April 1950. He had two children, Kenneth and Raymond, born in the 1930s, presumably from an earlier marriage. He died in Greenwich, London. ==Career==