Rupert Murdoch - Early Life

Early Life

Murdoch was born in Melbourne, the only son of Sir Keith Murdoch (1885–1952) and Elisabeth Greene (born 1909). He has English, Irish and Scottish ancestry. His parents were both born in Melbourne. Keith Murdoch was a renowned war correspondent and later a regional newspaper magnate. He asked for a rendezvous with his future wife after seeing her debutante photograph in one of his own newspapers and they married in 1928, when she was aged 19 and he 23 years her senior. In addition to Rupert, the couple had three daughters: Janet Calvert-Jones, Anne Kantor and Helen Handbury (1929–2004).

Murdoch attended Geelong Grammar School, where he had his first experience of editing a publication, being co-editor of the school's official journal The Corian and editor of the student journal If Revived. He also took his School's cricket team to the National Junior Finals. He worked part-time at the Melbourne Herald and was groomed by his father from an early age to take over the family business. Murdoch read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Worcester College, the University of Oxford in England, where he supported the Labour Party and managed Oxford Student Publications Limited, the publishing house of Cherwell Newspaper. After her husband's death from cancer in 1952, Elisabeth Murdoch went on to invest herself in charity work, as life governor of the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne and establishing the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. At 102 (in 2011) she had 74 descendants. Murdoch completed an MA before working as a sub-editor with the Daily Express for two years.