British screenwriter who wrote the scripts for some of the most popular British comedies of the post-World War II period.

Clarke worked as a free-lance journalist and novelist before joining Ealing Studios as a writer in 1943. He scripted several dramatic motion pictures, notably The Blue Lamp (1950), but received international fame for such comedies as the Oscar-nominated Passport to Pimlico (1949), Hue and Cry (1950), the Academy Award-winning The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), and Barnacle Bill (1957). After Ealing Studios closed (1957), Clarke turned to Hollywood, where his work included screenplays for A Tale of Two Cities (1958) and Sons and Lovers (1960), which brought him his third Academy Award nomination. In the mid-1960s he gave up script writing to write novels and an autobiography, This Is Where I Came In (1974).