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Chapter 1 - Beginnings
He was educated at Broomfield House School, Kew, Surrey; the Lycée Français de Londres, South Kensington, London (because his mother was a francophile and it had not occurred to her that, not understanding French, he would be unlikely to learn much); the Duff-Miller Learning Academy, South Kensington (a cramming establishment to try and recover from the standstill his education had come to while at the Lycée) and from 1955 to 1964 at St Edmunds School, Canterbury, Kent, the smallest and one of the academically poorest public schools in England. The selection of this pathetic establishment, which was in any case beyond the means of his parents (and was indeed at the end paid for by one of his uncles), was based on two criteria: from his mother’s point of view it was a public school, which she considered absolutely essential, and it played football which satisfied his father. He played wicket keeper for the junior school cricket 1st XI. In senior school he played hockey for the 2nd XI. He once came second in the school cross-country run and twice won the event. He left school with 2 General Certificate of Education "Advanced" and 6 "Ordinary" levels and no career ideas (or real qualifications) whatsoever and applied for a short-service commission in the Army. He attended a selection course at the Regular Commissions Board at Westbury in Wiltshire and failed (“We find you to be intelligent and clear thinking but too quiet…”), which was probably a blessing in disguise as subsequent contacts with the intellectually enervating and tradition- and class-bound army were to show. In 1965 he started work as a clerk in the stationery store of Caltex Services Ltd, Knightsbridge Green, London SW1, the European purchasing offices of the oil giant. From 1965 to 1966 he lived at 5 Ralston Street, Chelsea, London, following the eviction of the family from Queensberry House. From 1965 to 1966 he worked as a general accident insurance clerk with the Commercial Union, Law Courts Branch, Chichester House, High Holborn, London WC1 and started studying part-time for the Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute qualification. Binstead Binsted Binsteed family genealogy home page © 2004-2010 Richard Binstead for Binstead Binsted Binsteed family genealogy
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Born at 02:00 on Friday 27 December
1946 at Chiswick Hospital, Mddx during the coldest winter for over
50 years. "Then on 20 January...the blizzards began to sweep in
across the country again and again through the rest of January and
on through the coldest February for 300 years. In the hills nearly a
third of the sheep perished. In East Anglia the snowdrifts piled and
piled to a height of fourteen feet. Off the Norfolk coast ice-floes
eerily transformed the North Sea into a semblance of the Arctic."
("The Lost Victory" by Corelli Barnet p.199). During infancy, he had a near
fatal bout of gastro-enteritis. From birth to 1948 he lived in
flats at 76 Ormonde Court, Upper Richmond Road, Putney, London SW15.
From 1948 to 1965 he lived at 8 Queensberry House, Friars Lane,
Richmond, Surrey, a block of retirement flats built on the site of
the garden of the old Richmond Palace. (Historical note: in
Elizabethan times, there was an attempt to establish a silk industry
in England and mulberry trees were planted for the silkworms.
One of these trees, or a descendant, still stood in the garden of
the flats, hence their name, along with odd pieces of weather-worn
statuary hiding in the bushes). During childhood he contracted
both chickenpox and measles.