Denis Kelly was born 31 January 1916, the eldest son of Richard Cecil Kelly, OBE and Joan Maisie Kelly, of Hyde Manor, Kingston, Sussex. He was educated at Marlborough College and then Balliol College, Oxford (where he studied History), and in 1945 married Anne Marie (the marriage was dissolved in 1954), only daughter of James Stuart Anderson, Hinton House, Christchurch; they had one daughter. During the war, Kelly served first in the Surrey and Sussex Yeomanry, (1939-40), then in the Indian Mountain Artillery, in India and Burma [later Myanmar], (1941-45). During this time he had been called to the Bar, (in 1942), and Kelly's legal career included: the Midland and Oxford Circuit; Bencher (1976); Emeritus (1987); Blackstone Pupillage Prize (1947); Harmsworth Law Scholar (1948); Deputy Chairman, Kesteven Quarter Sessions, and Deputy Recorder of Bedford (1968); Alternate Chairman, Burnham Committee (1973)– However, Kelly was never really devoted to the legal profession, and after the war joined Winston Churchill's team, first as archivist, then as a literary assistant on Churchill's war memoirs, "The Second World War" and on "A History of the English Speaking Peoples", from 1947 to 1957. Kelly's own publications include an abridged version of Churchill's "The Second World War" (1959), and (with R. MacLeod) "The Ironside Diaries 1939-40" (1962). He died on 17 February 1990.