Alvin Hall - Early Life

Early Life

Hall was born in Tallahassee, Florida, one of seven children to a family of farmers, day workers and fishermen. Interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 program Midweek he said that his grandmother had told him he was 'everything he had', something that helped him get through difficult financial decisions; she was also a great saver and gave him 50 dollars when he was heading to Yale university. He grew up in severe poverty. He studied for a Bachelor of Arts in English at Bowdoin College and a Master of Arts in American literature at the University of North Carolina. After a period of unemployment and working as a college professor (teaching literature), he started to take an interest in finance.

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