About

John Michael Croft was an English actor, schoolteacher, and writer. Based upon his own experience of supply teaching in tough secondary schools, he wrote the controversial 1954 anti-corporal punishment novel Spare the Rod, which was later released as a film. He founded the National Youth Theatre in 1956 with Kenneth Spring. Since 2017, former students of the National Youth Theatre have come forward with allegations of historic abuse against Croft.