Early Life
Donaldson was born in Kilkeel, County Down, in Northern Ireland. He attended the Kilkeel High School then Castlereagh College. He joined the Ulster Unionist Party and the Orange Order as a young man and later worked for the MP Enoch Powell.
Two of Donaldson's cousins were killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army while serving in the Royal Ulster Constabulary: Sam Donaldson was killed in 1970 and Alex Donaldson, a Chief Inspector, died in a mortar attack on a Newry police station in 1985.
Read more about this topic: Jeffrey Donaldson
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
But they are gone to early death, who late in school
Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.”
—Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)
“A native health and innocence
Within my bones did grow,
And while my God did all his glories show,
I felt a vigour in my sense
That was all spirit: I within did flow
With seas of life like wine;
I nothing in the world did know
But ‘twas divine.”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)