Early Life
Geoffrey Howe was born in 1926 at Port Talbot in Wales. A pupil of the Bridgend Preparatory School, Bryntirion, he then attended Abberley Hall School, Worcestershire and Winchester College. He then did National Service as a Lieutenant with the Royal Corps of Signals in East Africa, by his own account giving political lectures in Swahili about how Africans should avoid communism and remain loyal to "Bwana Kingy George". Having declined an offer to remain in the army as a captain, he went up to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he read Law and was chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association, and on the committee of the Cambridge Union Society. He was called to the Bar in 1952 and was made a QC in 1965. He stood as the Conservative Party candidate in Aberavon at the 1955 and 1959 general elections, losing in a very safe Labour Party seat. He became chairman of the Bow Group, an internal Conservative think tank of 'young modernisers' in the 1960s, and edited its magazine Crossbow.
Lord Howe describes himself as quarter Scottish, quarter Cornish and half Welsh.
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