There's not a ton that we know about like his early non professional life because he was a pretty private feller. We do know that he drove an ambulance and worked in intelligence during and after World War two which is where he met his second wife. A reviewer says of the biography it quote gives a portrait of a man who's cold bullying, isolated, snobbish and super sensitive. And then his steps on a Nikolai Tolstoy who also wrote a biography about him kind of spoke about him less than flatteringly and like as a stepfather at least.