David Aaronovitch - Early Life

Early Life

Aaronovitch is the son of the economist, Communist and intellectual Sam Aaronovitch, and brother of the actor Owen Aaronovitch and scriptwriter and author Ben Aaronovitch. He attended Gospel Oak Primary School until 1965, Holloway County Comprehensive 1965-68, and William Ellis School 1968-72, all in London.

He studied Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford from October 1973 until April 1974, when he was sent down (expelled) for failing the German part of his History exams. He completed his education at the Victoria University of Manchester, graduating in 1978 with a 2:1 BA (Hons) in History. While at Manchester, he was a member of the 1975 University Challenge team that lost in the first round after answering most questions with the name of a marxist ("Trotsky", "Lenin", "Karl Marx" or "Che Guevara"); the team's tactics were a protest against the fact that the Oxford and Cambridge universities can enter each of their colleges in the contest as a separate team, even though the individual colleges are not universities in themselves.

He was initially a Eurocommunist. He was also active in the National Union of Students (NUS) where he got to know the president at the time, Charles Clarke, who later became Home Secretary. Aaronovitch himself succeeded Trevor Phillips as president of the NUS from 1980 to 1982. He was elected on a Broad Left ticket. He has written that he was brought up "to react to wealth with a puritanical pout".