Early Life
Blair was born in Chester to Jim and Sheila in 1953. His father spent most of his career working for Lever Brothers, eventually rising to manage the dock at Port Sunlight in Merseyside. His mother was from Sheffield and her father had made a living as a steel merchant until he suffered major losses in the Great Depression in the 1930s. Both Blair and his brother, six years his senior, were sent to independent school at the expense of one of their father's brothers, who was a successful doctor. Blair's brother, Sandy, left school early to work for a solicitors' firm.
Blair was sent to Wrekin College in Wellington, Shropshire. Jim had been determined that his son would become a doctor—as his father (Ian's grandfather) had been. However, Blair rebelled against his father and refused to take O-Level biology, knowing it would disqualify him from a potential medical career. He initially had no aspiration to go to university, as neither of his parents nor his brother had had a university education. However, he was inspired by a teacher at Wrekin to apply to Christ Church, Oxford.
Read more about this topic: Ian Blair
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Pray be always in motion. Early in the morning go and see things; and the rest of the day go and see people. If you stay but a week at a place, and that an insignificant one, see, however, all that is to be seen there; know as many people, and get into as many houses as ever you can.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air.... It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog’s life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)