Early Life
Mooney was born in Broadgreen Hospital to Gladys (née Norbury) and Edward Mooney. She spent her earliest years in Liverpool on a council estate called The Green on Queen's Drive. She passed her eleven plus and went to Aigburth Vale Girls’ High School (merged with another school to become Calderstones School in 1989). Mooney moved to Wiltshire at the age of fourteen, when her parents bought their first house. She then attended school in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, at Trowbridge Girls' High School (a girls' grammar school which merged with a boys' grammar school to become the comprehensive John of Gaunt School in 1974). She passed eight O levels and took English, Latin and Art at A level. She applied unsuccessfully to the University of Oxford (at that time nobody from her school had been admitted to Oxford), and went on to study English Language and Literature at University College London, where she obtained a distinguished First in 1969. She met philosophy student Jonathan Dimbleby while they were both working on the student newspaper Pi. Dimbleby became her first husband; they married in February 1968 in Kensington after knowing each other for four months.
Read more about this topic: Bel Mooney
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