Henry Valentine L. Swanzy was born in Ireland on 14 Jun 1915 and moved to England in 1920. He was educated at preparatory schools in Cheltenham and Eastbourne before proceeding to Wellington College in 1928. He read History at New College, Oxford, where he gained a First-Class Honours and was also winner of the Gibbs Prize. After spending a year abroad, he entered the Colonial Service in 1937, where he remained until 1941. Swanzy then joined the BBC as a News Talks Assistant in the Overseas Service, transferring to the BBC Colonial Service in 1944; he spent the following ten years as an Assistant working on the long-running series Caribbean Voices, West African Voices, and Calling Mauritius. During this period, he was also Editor of African Affairs (the journal of the Royal African Society) and a member of the Fabian Colonial Bureau (1945-1949). In 1954, he was seconded to the Gold Coast Broadcasting Service (later Ghana Broadcasting Service) but returned to the BBC in 1958. Swanzy continued to work as a scriptwriter for the BBC External Service until his retirement in 1975.