William Edward Crankshaw was born in the suburban town of Woodford, Essex, on 3 January 1909 to Arthur Edward Crankshaw (1876–1965) and Amy Beatrice Crankshaw (1879–1962). He had one sibling, a younger brother Geoffrey Crankshaw (1912–2009) a noted critic of English music. Edward Crankshaw was educated in the Nonconformist public school Bishop's Stortford College, Hertfordshire, England. He started working as a journalist for a few months at "The Times". In the 1930s he lived in Vienna, Austria, teaching English and learning German. He witnessed Adolf Hitler's Austro-German union in 1938, and predicted the Second World War while living there.