Early Life
Duncan Smith was born in Edinburgh, in Scotland, in 1954. He is the son of W. G. G. Duncan Smith, a Group Captain of the British Royal Air Force, who was highly decorated in World War II, and Pamela Summers, a ballerina. They were married in 1946. Duncan Smith's maternal great-grandmother was a Japanese woman living in the then Peking, Ellen Oshey, who married Pamela's grandfather, merchant seaman Captain Samuel Lewis Shaw, from Ireland. Other relations include Canadian CBC wartime broadcaster Peter Stursberg, who was born in China, and whose 2002 book No Foreign Bones in China records the story of the Anglo-Japanese couple, and his son, current CBC vice-president Richard Stursberg. Through Captain Shaw, Duncan Smith is also a distant relative of George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright and socialist.
Read more about this topic: Iain Duncan Smith
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Make-believe is the avenue to much of the young child’s early understanding. He sorts out impressions and tries out ideas that are foundational to his later realistic comprehension. This private world sometimes is a quiet, solitary
world. More often it is a noisy, busy, crowded place where language grows, and social skills develop, and where perseverance and attention-span expand.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)