📍Shamley Green, Surrey, United Kingdom
1950 – 1966“Richard Charles Nicholas Branson was born in London in July 1950 and grew up in Shamley Green, a village in the Surrey Hills, the son of Edward Branson, a barrister, and Eve, a former dancer and air hostess. His mother encouraged independence and adventure, and the countryside around the village was his playground. He struggled at school with dyslexia, which was not diagnosed at the time, and at Stowe School he started a magazine for young people, called Student, which he ran from the school as a teenager. He left Stowe at sixteen to work on the magazine full-time, selling advertising and interviewing well-known figures. Student led to a mail-order record business, then a record shop, and in 1972 to Virgin Records, the start of the Virgin group.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Branson, R. Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way (1998), Virgin Books; Brown, M. Richard Branson: The Authorised Biography (1998), Michael Joseph