Ackerley's memoir
My Father and Myself, begins: "I was born in 1896 and my parents were married in 1919." His father, Roger Ackerley, was a fruit merchant, known as the "Banana King" of London. Roger had been previously married to an actress named Louise Burckhardt who died young and childless, probably of tuberculosis, in 1892.
Shortly afterward, he met another actress named Janetta Aylward (known as Netta) in Paris, and the two of them moved in together in London. Three years later she gave birth to a boy, Peter, then Joe a year later, and Nancy in 1899. Peter's birth, and possibly Joe's and Nancy's as well, was the result of an "accident" according to Joe's Aunt Bunny, Netta's sister: "Your father happened to have run out of French letters that day," she said. Roger Ackerley had "a cavalier attitude towards contraception."
Ackerley was educated at Rossall School, a public and preparatory school in Fleetwood, Lancashire. While at this school he discovered he was attracted to other boys. His striking good looks earned him the nickname "Girlie" but he was not sexually active, or only very intermittently, as a schoolboy. He described himself as
a chaste, puritanical, priggish, rather narcissistic little boy, more repelled than attracted to sex, which seemed to me a furtive, guilty, soiling thing, exciting, yes, but nothing whatever to do with those feelings which I had not yet experienced but about which I was already writing a lot of dreadful sentimental verse, called romance and love.
Failing his entrance examinations for Cambridge University, Ackerley applied for a commission in the Army, and as World War I was in full swing, he was accepted immediately as a Second Lieutenant and assigned to the 8th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment, part of the 18th Division, then stationed in East Anglia. In June 1915 he was sent over to France. The following summer he was wounded at the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916. He was shot in the arm and an explosion caused shards of a whiskey bottle in his bag to be imbedded in his side. He lay wounded in a shell-hole for six hours but was eventually rescued by British troops and sent home for a period of sick-leave.
He soon volunteered to go back to the front. He had been promoted to captain by now and so, in December 1916, when his older brother Peter arrived in France, Ackerley was his superior officer. Reportedly the cheerful and kind-hearted Peter was not resentful and saluted his brother "gladly and conscientiously." In February, 1917, Peter was wounded in action on a dangerous assignment, heading into No man's land from a dangerous ditch (where Ackerley said goodbye to him) ominously called the "Boom Ravine." Though Peter managed to get back to the British lines, Ackerley never saw him again.
In May 1917 Ackerley led an attack in the Arras region where he was again wounded, this time in the buttock and thigh. Again he was obliged to wait for help in a shell-hole, but this time the Germans arrived first and he was taken prisoner. Being an officer, his internment camp was located in neutral Switzerland and was rather comfortable. Here he began his play,
The Prisoners of War, which deals with the cabin fever of captivity and the frustrated longings he experienced for another English prisoner. He was not repatriated to England until after the war ended.
On 7 August 1918, two months before the end of hostilities, Peter Ackerley was killed in battle Peter's death haunted Ackerley his entire life. Ackerley suffered from survivor's guilt and thought his father might have preferred his death to his brother's. One result of Peter's death was that Roger and Netta got married in 1919, reportedly because Peter had died "a bastard".
After the war Ackerley returned to England and attended Cambridge. Scant evidence remains from this time in his life as Ackerley wrote little about it. He moved to London and continued to write and enjoy the cosmopolitan delights of the capital. He met E. M. Forster and other literary bright lights, but was lonely despite a plenitude of sexual partners. With his play having trouble finding a producer, and feeling generally adrift and distant from his family, Ackerley turned to Forster for guidance.
Forster got him a position as secretary to the Maharaja of Chhatarpur who he knew from writing
A Passage to India. Ackerley spent about five months in India, still under British rule, and met a number of Anglo-Indians for whom he developed a strong distaste. The recollections of this time are the basis for his comic memoir
Hindoo Holiday. The Maharaja was also a homosexual, and His Majesty's obsessions and dalliances, along with Ackerley's observations about Anglo-Indians, account for much of the humor of the work.
Back in England,
Prisoners of War was finally produced to some acclaim. Its run began at The Three Hundred Club on 5 July 1925, then transferred to The Playhouse on 31 August. Ackerley capitalized on his success, carousing with London's theatrical crowd, and through Cambridge friends met the actor John Gielgud, and other rising stars of the stage.