English painter and novelist chiefly remembered for two imaginative novels of adolescence, Maiden Voyage (1943) and In Youth Is Pleasure (1944).

Welch was educated at Repton School in Derbyshire. After a visit to China he studied painting at the Goldsmith School of Art. In 1935, while still at school, he was severely injured in a cycling accident that left him an invalid for the rest of his life; but he continued painting, exhibiting frequently at the Leicester galleries, and began his career as a writer.

With the exception of two novels and a volume of short stories, Brave and Cruel (1946), Welch's other works have been published posthumously: A Voice Through a Cloud (1950), considered by many his best novel; Journals (1952), an account of his wide travels, taken despite his bad health; I Left My Grandfather's House (1958), which is only a very rough draft; and Denton Welch—Selections from His Published Works (1963), which contains a notable introduction by Jocelyn Brooke.