Motion picture director and screenwriter. The son of Lord Herbert Asquith, Britain's liberal prime minister (1908-16), he was educated at Eaton House, Winchester College and, from 1921 to 1925, Balliol College, Oxford. In 1925, he was a founding member of the London Film Society, with Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Julian Huxley and others. In 1926 he visited Hollywood for six months as a guest of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to study filmmaking. Back in England he started his film career as assistant director, screenwriter and editor. He made his film debut as a director in 1928 with the "black comedy" "Shooting Stars." His work in silent film was influenced by expressionist film from Germany and was experimental in nature, as can be seen in what is probably his best-known silent film "A Cottage on Dartmoor" (1930). Most of his work was divided between semidocumentaries and the adaptation of plays and novels, which he staged in a stylistically restrained but tasteful manner and with many nuances. At his best he is a master of atmosphere and can extract the most from a dramatic situation. His „Pygmalion" (1938) is considered by many the best screen adaptation of Shaw, and his "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1952) catches most of the sparkle of Oscar Wilde's wit. Other successes include "French Without Tears" (1940), "Fanny by Gaslight" (1944), "The Way to the Stars" (1945), "The Winslow Boy" (1948), "The Browning Version" (1951), "Carrington V.C." (1954), "Libel" (1959), "The Millionaires" (1960, with Sophia Loren), "The V.I.P.s" (1963, with Elizabeth Taylor) and "The Yellow Rolls-Royce" (1964, with Ingrid Bergman). He had a long professional association with playwright Terence Rattigan (he wrote the screenplays on ten of his films) and producer Anatole de Grunwald. In 1967 he was tipped to direct the big-screen adaptation of the best-selling novel "The Shoes of the Fisherman"(1968), set to co-star Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quinn, but he had to drop out of the production due to ill health. He died of cancer.