Early and Private Life
Sainsbury was born in London, the middle son of Alan Sainsbury and his wife Doreen. His brothers are John and Timothy, former Conservative Minister of Trade; David Sainsbury, Labour MP and Minister for Science, is a cousin. His great-grandfather, John James Sainsbury, established a grocer's at 173 Drury Lane in 1869 which became the British supermarket chain Sainsbury's. Sainsbury was educated at Eton College, where he became head of his house and President of the Eton Society ("Pop"). A keen sportsman, he was selected for the Eton-Harrow match at Lord's in 1947 as a bowler; sent in as a nightwatchman, he scored a century. After National Service as "sports officer" in the Life Guards, he read history at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Near the end of his life, Sainsbury entered into a civil partnership with his partner for 40 years, Stewart Grimshaw, a restaurateur and bookseller. He suffered from Parkinson's disease in his later years, and ultimately suffered a fall which caused his death.
Read more about this topic: Simon Sainsbury
Famous quotes containing the words early, private and/or life:
“Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)
“Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)