Early Life
Born to David and Jane, Tomlinson was born in Hamilton, New Zealand, and raised in nearby Ngaruawahia. His father was from a Lancashire farming family, who met Jane whilst studying agriculture at Newcastle University. Tomlinson moved to Armathwaite in Cumbria, England in 1968. Tomlinson is the middle child of three brothers. He won a scholarship for the independent Barnard Castle School in County Durham, where he was a contemporary of Rory Underwood and Rob Andrew, who went on to become England rugby internationals. He excelled at mathematics and physics, and won a scholarship to Cambridge University in 1981.
His fellow student, historian Andrew Roberts, remembers Tomlinson as:
a bright and charming undergraduate, popular with the boys for his drinking and sporting prowess, and with the girls for his dark good looks. If there was something exaggerated about his tales about himself - a slight Walter Mitty complex - it hardly mattered in the relaxed and tolerant environment of university life. Neither did his obvious and driving ambition seem particularly untoward.
Tomlinson completed flying training with Cambridge University Air Squadron and won a Half Blue for Modern Pentathlon. He graduated from Gonville and Caius College with a starred First Class honours degree in aeronautical engineering in 1984, and was approached by MI6 shortly afterwards. Following his graduation he sat examinations to join the Royal Navy as a Fleet Air Arm Officer, but he failed the medical examination due to childhood asthma. Instead he applied for and won a Kennedy Scholarship, which allowed him to study technology policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with full funding during 1986-7. Following this, he won a prize from the Rotary Foundation, allowing him to study in the country of his choice for a year. Consequently, he enrolled in a political science course at the University of Buenos Aires, where he became a fluent Spanish speaker. He continued to pursue his aeronautical interests and qualified as a glider pilot with the Fuerza Aérea Argentina. From 1988-9 Tomlinson worked in Mayfair for management consultancy company Booz Allen Hamilton.
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