Family and Education
Humphrey Spender was the third son of Harold Spender, a Liberal journalist and writer who founded the Boys' Club movement with Arnold Toynbee. Humphrey's mother, Violet Schuster, came from a German family who had emigrated to Britain in the 1870s. (She died in 1921. Harold Spender died in 1926.) Humphrey had two brothers (the poet Stephen Spender and the scientist and explorer Michael Spender) and one sister, Christine.
As a child, Humphrey learnt photography from his older brother Michael Spender and was given a handsome German camera for his tenth birthday. After Gresham's School, Spender initially studied art history at Freiburg University for a year, where he spent time with his brother, Stephen Spender, and other literary figures including Christopher Isherwood. During this period he gained exposure to continental European avant-garde photography and film. He then qualified for a career in architecture with the Architectural Association, but was unenthusiastic about this field of work and decided soon after graduating to make a career out of photography.
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