Early years Brown was born in
Penang,
Malaya, on 25 April 1891, His father had a practice in Malaya, and Brown was sent to England to be educated at Suffolk Hall preparatory school and then, from 1902 to 1907, at
Cheltenham College. In the entrance examination for the civil service in 1913 he came sixth out of eighty-four successful candidates. Those above him went on to distinguished careers as public servants, but Brown did not. He was assigned to the
Home Office, where his career lasted two days: finding himself asked to deal with an application by Staffordshire police for the increased provision of lavatories he wrote his comments and walked out, to earn his living writing as a freelance about subjects of more interest to him. On 4 January 1916 Brown married Irene Gladys Hentschel (1890–1979), an actress and later a director. The biographer
Philip Howard writes, "her knowledge of the far side of the footlights enriched her husband's criticism". The marriage was lifelong. They had no children. His opposite number on
The Daily Telegraph,
W. A. Darlington, wrote of Brown, "No contemporary drama critic has enjoyed a higher reputation for good judgment combined with witty and scholarly writing".
J. C. Trewin called him the leading English drama critic of his time ... wise, balanced, modest and a master-stylist [who] will stand with the few major English critics".
The Times commented that it fell to Brown to interpret "the great outburst of new and experimental modes of playwriting" that followed the war. His responses to the
expressionists such as
Karel Čapek,
Luigi Pirandello,
Elmer Rice and
Eugene O'Neill were collected in a volume,
Masques and Phrases (1926), compiled from his press reviews.
The Times commented that it remains a valuable commentary on a remarkable chapter in the history of the theatre. He said that Eliot "offers the public the balderdash of his Waste-land (pretentious bungling with the English language?) and immediately becomes a pundit, bestriding the Atlantic". He was equally dismissive of
Ezra Pound. In addition to his work for
The Guardian, Brown became the drama critic for the
Saturday Review in 1923 and was the Shute lecturer in the art of the theatre at
Liverpool University three years later. In 1929 he added
The Observer to the papers for whom he reviewed. In 1939 he was appointed professor of drama by the
Royal Society of Literature and the following year he became as director of drama for the
Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts the following year. But this was in the middle of the
Second World War, and few journalists were available. Astor offered the editorship to a leading civil servant who declined it. Meanwhile the paper was brought out by the efforts of staff from
The Economist and an informally assembled team of European emigrés. The directors turned to Brown and invited him to be acting editor until after the war. With the help of his friend
Donald Tyerman of
The Economist, he "successfully steered the paper on its altered course".
Final years Brown spent his final years concentrating on writing books. He eventually published more than 75 books covering a wide range of topics and genres, but he was best known for his works on literature and the English language. He was a member of
the Literary Society, described him as "a dry wine perhaps, but full of flavour" and his publisher,
Rupert Hart-Davis, found him "nice as ever but even more liberally spread with
scurf, cigarette-ash and shaving-soap than usual". A former colleague wrote: Brown died at his home in
Hampstead, London in 1974, aged 82. ==Works==