 Born at Southsea, the son of Surgeon-Captain Fred Claude Bromley Gittings and his wife Dora Mary, née Brayshaw, the young Gittings was educated at St Edward's School, Oxford, where he was taught by George Mallaby, and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he arrived in 1930 with a scholarship, gaining a First in 1933.He later wrote the article on George Mallaby in the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography".While still at school he published poems and thus encountered Christopher Fry, a lifelong friend.