Early Life
Fry was born in Hampstead, London, on 24 August 1957, the son of Marianne Eve Fry (née Newman) and Alan John Fry, who was an English physicist and inventor. His maternal grandparents, Martin and Rosa Neumann, were Hungarian Jewish immigrants from Šurany, which is now in Slovakia. His mother's aunt and cousins died in Auschwitz. Fry grew up in the village of Booton near Reepham, Norfolk, having moved from Chesham, Buckinghamshire at an early age.
Fry briefly attended Cawston Primary School, Cawston, Norfolk, before going on to Stouts Hill Preparatory School, in Uley, Gloucestershire, at the age of seven, and then to Uppingham School, Rutland, where he joined Fircroft house and was described as a "near-asthmatic genius". He was expelled from Uppingham when he was 15, and subsequently from the Paston School.
At 17, after leaving Norfolk College of Arts and Technology, Fry absconded with a credit card stolen from a family friend, was arrested in Swindon, and as a result spent three months in Pucklechurch Prison on remand.
Following his release he resumed his education at City College Norwich, promising administrators that he would study rigorously to sit the Cambridge entrance exams. He scored well enough to gain a scholarship to Queens' College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, Fry joined the Cambridge Footlights, appeared on University Challenge, and gained a degree in English literature. At the Footlights Fry met his future comedy collaborator Hugh Laurie.
Read more about this topic: Stephen Fry
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Franklin said once in one of his inspired flights of malignity—
Early to bed and early to rise
Make a man healthy and wealth and wise.
As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on such terms.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“When I was in high school I thought a vocation was a particular calling. Here’s a voice: “Come, follow me.” My idea of a calling now is not: “Come.” It’s like what I’m doing right now, not what I’m going to be. Life is a calling.”
—Rebecca Sweeney (b. 1938)