Early Life
Born in Abersychan, Monmouthshire, in south-eastern Wales, as an only child, Roy Jenkins was the son of a National Union of Mineworkers official, Arthur Jenkins. His father was imprisoned during the 1926 General Strike for his involvement in a riot and later became Member of Parliament for Pontypool, Parliamentary Private Secretary to Clement Attlee, and briefly a minister in the 1945 Labour government. Jenkins's mother, Hattie Harris, was the daughter of a steelworks manager.
Jenkins was educated at Abersychan County School, University College, Cardiff, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was twice defeated for the Presidency of the Oxford Union but took First Class Honours in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE). His university colleagues included Tony Crosland, Denis Healey, and Edward Heath, and he became friends with all three, although he was never particularly close to Healey. During the Second World War he served with the Royal Artillery and then at Bletchley Park, reaching the rank of captain. On 20 January 1945, in the final year of the War, he married Jennifer Morris. She was made a DBE for services to ancient and historical buildings.
Read more about this topic: Roy Jenkins
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them; from that have issued endless consequences.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)