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 life, early and/or life:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
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“Young, and so thin, and so straight.
So straight! as if nothing could ever bend her.
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And the rest of things in life that were for poor women,
Coming to them grinning and pretty with intent to bend and to kill.”
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