Early Life
Steel was adopted a few days after he was born. He grew up in Swanley, Kent. He was expelled from Swanley Comprehensive School for attending a cricket course at the age of 15, and went on to work in a garage. From there he went on to make his first public performance as a poet.
In the late 1970s his father suffered a mental breakdown and was placed into care at Stonehouse Hospital. The shabby conditions of the home reinforced Steel's political beliefs.
Read more about this topic: Mark Steel
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“For with this desire of physical beauty mingled itself early the fear of death—the fear of death intensified by the desire of beauty.”
—Walter Pater 1839–1894, British writer, educator. originally published in Macmillan’s Magazine (Aug. 1878)
“Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)