Early Life
He was born in Camberwell, South London. His father's forebears were village cobblers in a small village in Hampshire; his father broke with this tradition to become a greengrocer; his father would relate how he used to ride with him to buy vegetables at the Covent Garden market in London. His mother's parents were of Irish descent; her father had emigrated to England and worked as a clerk in the naval dockyard in Chatham . His maternal grandmother, who survived into her eighties, was sent out to domestic service at the age of twelve, she eventually married his grandfather and raised a large family, then in her late sixties emigrated to Australia to join her daughter and son-in-law, and finally returned to the UK for her last years.
His father and mother were each the first in their families to receive a university education; they met and became engaged while students at the Institute of Education at the University of London, but were unable to get married for some years because his father had to care for his own mother and siblings. His father worked as a secondary school teacher of physics, chemistry and mathematics. His mother also taught secondary school mathematics for a time, but had to give this up when he was born. He was eventually followed by two sisters, Clare and Judith, and two brothers, Terence and Paul. Their parents were both Roman Catholics, so the siblings were all brought up in that faith. He ceased to be a practicing Catholic in his early twenties.
Soon after he was born, his parents bought a house in Upper Norwood, south London. When he was 18 months old, WWII broke out and he was evacuated to Englefield Green, a small village in Surrey on the edge of the great park of Windsor Castle, where he stayed for the duration of the war. After the end of the war, he returned to the Upper Norwood house and lived there until 1950; his father taught at a school in north-east London and his mother looked after the five children full time. He attended the local Catholic primary school, and later, following a successful performance in the "eleven plus" examination which he took rather earlier than most, and then transferred to Wimbledon College.
Read more about this topic: Anthony James Leggett
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