Malcolm Turnbull - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Turnbull was born on 24 October 1954 to Bruce Bligh Turnbull and Coral Magnolia Lansbury, who married the following year. His father was a hotel broker; his mother was a radio actor, writer and academic and a cousin of the British film and television actor Angela Lansbury. They separated when Malcolm was nine and he was brought up by his father. He spent his first three years of school at Vaucluse Public School. He continued his primary education at the Sydney Grammar Prep, St Ives. He then went to Sydney Grammar School's senior school at College Street in Sydney. He was senior school co-captain in 1972. In 1987, in memory of his late father, he set up the Bruce Turnbull means-tested scholarship at Sydney Grammar, which offers full remission of fees to a student unable to afford them.

Turnbull graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Arts. While at university in Sydney he worked as a political journalist for Nation Review, Radio 2SM and Channel 9 covering state politics. He then studied for a Bachelor of Civil Law degree at Brasenose College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar from 1978 to 1980. While at Oxford he worked for The Sunday Times as well as contributing to newspapers and magazines in the United States and Australia.