Born at Woodbridge, Suffolk, the son of a schoolmaster. Read classics at Corpus Christi, Cambridge but transferred to botany in 1923 obtaining his BA in 1924. Subsequently worked for much of his professional life at Kew where he specialised in the Euphorbiaceae. His interest in entomology developed after the second World War when he joined the Cotteswold Naturalist’s Field Club (1941) and the Amateur Entomologists Society (1943), and focussed on food plants in particular. He published some 50 notes in the EMM., including 13 on Coleoptera one of which added Platycis cosnardi, found by Robert Lewis’s sister in her Monmouth garden, to the British list (80, 1944, pp.204-205). Another interesting note concerned the finding of two examples of Phosphanus hemipterus in Ashdown Forest. (97, 1961, p.182).
David Atty records that Airy Shaw and E.G.Neal were collecting Coleoptera at Rendcomb and Daglingsworth in Gloucestershire, 1942-45, where they found 492 species and that in 1970 they gave to him their notebook and collection, housed in a 30 drawer cabinet and 7 boxes together with a comprehensive reference collection which had belonged to G.S.Kloet (Coleoptera of Gloucestershire, 1983, v.) (MD 11/04, 8/17)