Early Life
Paxman was born in Leeds. His mother, Joan McKay (née Dickson), born 1920, was a housewife, and his father, Arthur Keith Paxman, worked in industry. Paxman is the eldest of four children and has two brothers, one of whom, Giles, is the British Ambassador to Spain (having previously been ambassador to Mexico), and the other, James, is the Chief Executive of the Dartmoor Preservation Association, and a sister, Jenny, a producer at BBC Radio.
He was brought up in Yorkshire and Peopleton, near Pershore, Worcestershire. In 1964, he went to Malvern College and read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he edited the undergraduate newspaper Varsity. While at Cambridge, Paxman was briefly a member of the Labour Club.
Paxman was the subject in January 2006 of an episode of the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?. The documentary concluded him to be descended from one Roger Packsman, a 14th century politician from Suffolk who had changed his name to Paxman (man of peace, "Pax" translates from Latin as peace) to impress "the electorate." His maternal grandmother was born in Glasgow, Scotland. The programme generated much publicity prior to its transmission by displaying the usually pitiless Paxman teary-eyed on camera when informed that his impoverished great-grandmother Mary Mackay's poor relief had been revoked because she'd had a child out of wedlock.
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