Jon Ewbank Manchip White was born in Cardiff, Wales, the son of shipping company owner Gwilym Manchip White. At the age of eight, he was sent to a boarding school in England to reduce his risk of catching tuberculosis from his father, who was ill with the disease. He earned a scholarship to Cambridge University in 1941, where he studied until World War II began and he enrolled in the Royal Navy. After initially ferrying men and supplies across the English Channel, he joined the Welsh Guard, where he served until the end of the war. After the war, he returned to Cambridge, and in 1950 he graduated with honors in English, prehistoric archaeology, and oriental languages, receiving a diploma in anthropology. He became a story editor for the BBC Television Service, where he read scripts and worked on episodes of his own. After working briefly for the British Foreign Service, he went back to writing for television and film. By 1962, he was back to writing for television. He also published novels and non-fiction. In 1967 he left his position at the BBC to become writer-in-residence at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he founded the school's creative writing department and eventually became a full professor. Ten years later he relocated to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where he became the Lindsey Young Professor of English and founded another creative writing department. In 2005, the Knoxville Writers' Guild recognized White with a Career Achievement Award.