He held government scientific posts in World War II and 1964-66. His sequence of novels Strangers and Brothers 1940-64 portrayed English life from 1920 onwards. His The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge Rede lecture 1959) discussed the absence of communication between literary and scientific intellectuals in the West, and added the phrase "the two cultures" to the language. Knighted 1957, Baron 1964.