Early Years
The son of Calouste Gulbenkian, he was born on the Bosporus but taken out of the country at an early age. Taken by his father to England, he was educated at Harrow School, Trinity College, Cambridge and in Germany. As a consequence of his educational background Gulbenkian saw himself as British and strove to live up to the model of the English gentleman. As such, during World War II he undertook some amateur sabotage in Vichy France on behalf of the United Kingdom. Despite this he was also attached to the Iranian Embassy in London in an honorary role (as he held Iranian citizenship) whilst he regained his Turkish citizenship in 1965. This however had helped him during the war as his neutral passport allowed him to cross between France and Spain with little trouble and thus gain access to British intelligence in Gibraltar.
Read more about this topic: Nubar Gulbenkian
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
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“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”
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“I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active—not more happy—nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)