Early Life
Troughton was born on 25 March 1920 in Mill Hill, Middlesex, England to Alec George Troughton, a solicitor, and Dorothy Evelyn Offord, who married in 1914 in Edmonton, and had an elder brother, Alec Robert (1915–1994), and a younger sister, Mary Edith (1923–2005). Troughton attended Mill Hill School and continued to live in Mill Hill for most of his life. While at Mill Hill School, he acted in a production of J.B. Priestley's "Bees on the Boat Deck" in March 1937. His brother A.R. ('Robin') Troughton shared the 1933 Walter Knox Prize for Chemistry with the future Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick, who also attended Mill Hill School.
He would later attend the Embassy School of Acting at Swiss Cottage, under Eileen Thorndike. After his time at the Embassy School of Acting, Troughton won a scholarship to the Leighton Rallius Studios at the John Drew Memorial Theatre on Long Island in New York, U.S..
When the Second World War broke out, he returned to Britain on a Belgian ship. The ship hit a mine and sank off the coast of Britain; Troughton escaped in a lifeboat. Troughton had joined the Tonbridge Repertory Company in 1939 and in 1940 joined the Royal Navy. He was a Lieutenant, R.N.V.R. on East Coast Convoy duty from February to August 1941, and Coastal Forces (M.G.B.'s) based at Great Yarmouth from November 1942 to 1945, and was "Mentioned in Dispatches". He was concerned in an "E" boat action, when one was successfully destroyed by ramming, and his ship and another destroyed two others by gunfire. His decorations included the 1939-45 Star, and Atlantic Star. He would wear a tea cosy on his head in cold weather in the North Sea.
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