Leo was born in KwaZulu, South Africa, the son of Charles Aylen, whom the Zulus elected Bishop of Zululand.

A scholar of New College, Oxford, Leo took a first in Classics. He ran for the university, and was a member of the first running team to run from Land's End to John O'Groats. He played solo piano sonatas and chamber music in the university music rooms, and climbed several 4000 metre peaks in the Alps. He had two of his plays produced, with another one given a staged reading, and he worked in Wladek Sheybal's acting studio.

On the first-ever Land's End - JohnO'Groats run.

He joined the Playwriting Group run by Bristol University Drama Department, where he had two more of his plays staged, gained a Ph.D for which he worked under H.D.F. Kitto, took acting classes at the Bristol Old Vic Drama School, and acted and directed in the university theatres, where his most notable production was one of The Clouds by Aristophanes in the original Greek with Professor Kitto as Socrates dangling in a basket.

His first appearance on British television was while running from Land's End to John O'Groats. His second appearance was in a TV follow-up to that production of The Clouds.

While a student, he had worked on a building site. A play he wrote about the experience was broadcast on BBC TV. He worked for the BBC as a director, first, for eighteen months, in educational radio, and then in TV Documentaries and Arts, where he was nominated for a BAFTA for The Drinking Party, an adaptation of Plato's Symposium, starring Leo McKern, Alan Bennett, and John Fortune, and directed by Jonathan Miller.

He then worked in the theatre, mainly the Greenwich, and started touring the United States performing his theatrical poetry shows. He lived for eighteen months in New York while he was Poet in Residence at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and has lived in New York and Los Angeles from time to time. Leo and his poetry have been made the sole subjects of three commercial TV programs (CBS).

Although brought up in England, Leo kept in touch with Zulu friends, including Prince Buthelezi with whom he has corresponded for twenty years. He spent time in KwaZulu during the late 1970's on a travel fellowship, and then made a performing tour of theatres, campuses, and Black arts centres; he performed at the Space in Cape Town, and the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. In the late 1980's, as apartheid was collapsing, he returned to the country, was detained by South African Army Intelligence for possessing books by banned black writers, participated in various Zulu and Swazi conferences, and gave poetry performances, including one to a gathering of three thousand Zulus in an open-air amphitheatre, as a prelude to a display of Zulu dancing. He belongs to two organisations - ZSA and Helwel - which raise money for community development in KwaZulu.