Early Years
He was the only son of William Edward Arnold-Forster (b. 1886, d. 1951), painter, publicist, and gardener, and his wife Katharine "Ka" Laird, née Cox (b. 1887, d. 1938) and grandson of Hugh Oakeley Arnold-Forster. His parents' families included leading politicians and writers, among them Matthew Arnold and his mother had been close to Rupert Brooke and his group as well as to Virginia Woolf. Shortly after his birth his parents went to live in a picturesque Cornish house, Eagle's Nest, in Zennor, Cornwall. They placed Mark at the age of seven in a boarding-school in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and at nine in Kurt Hahn's Schule Schloss Salem at Salem in Germany. When Hitler came to power in 1933 Hahn was driven into exile, and Arnold-Forster followed him to a new school, Gordonstoun in Scotland, where he stayed until he left school in 1937. This upbringing made him fluent in French and German. Arnold-Forster won a place to study mechanical engineering at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, but he never took this up. Instead, after a year's apprenticeship during 1938–39 with the Blue Funnel Line, involving a voyage to Manchuria, Arnold-Forster went on to join the Royal Navy.
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