Richard Arthur Warren Hughes was born in Weybridge, Surrey, the son of a civil servant. He was educated at Charterhouse, and in 1917, a schoolmaster sent one of his essays to The Spectator, where it was published. He attended Oriel College of Oxford University, where he co-edited with Robert Graves a poetry publication, Oxford Poetry, in 1921. He graduated in 1922, the same year his short play The Sisters' Tragedy was performed at the Royal Court Theatre. In 1924, his radio play Danger was broadcast on the BBC and became the world's first radio play. He worked as a journalist. In 1932, he married Frances Bazley, a painter, and settled in Norfolk. In 1934 the moved to Laugharne in south Wales, where Dylan Thomas stayed with them to write Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.
In addition to plays, short stories, and juvenile fiction, Hughes wrote four novels, the most famous of which is A High Wind in Jamaica (1929).
During World War II, Hughes served at a desk job. After the war, he wrote scripts for Ealing Studios for ten years before writing his trilogy The Human Predicament, only the first two volumes of which, The Fox in the Attic (1961) and The Wooden Shepherdess (1973), were complete when he died. The twelve chapters of the incomplete final volume were published after his death.
