Painter and teacher, born in Bushey, Hertfordshire, where his father Allan Robert Brown was art master at the Royal Masonic School. Several other members of the family were artists (including Hugh’s brothers Michael, whose surname used a hyphen, and Robert Brown). Boycott Brown learned from his father and studied at the Margaret Frobisher School, Bushey. In 1929 he began teaching at Royal Masonic Junior School, but he continued his studies in the evenings at Watford School of Art; during holidays studied at Heatherley’s School under Frederic Whiting and Bernard Adams; and during the 1930s was much encouraged by Sir John Arnesby Brown. By then Boycott Brown had begun his association with the East Anglian coast, a major theme in his work, although he also painted a lot abroad.