📍Harrow, London HA1, UK
1929 – 1939“I was born in Harrow, on the north-west edge of London, in March 1929. My father, Ralph, was a civil servant, the youngest of eleven children from a poor cotton-weaving family in Lancashire, and my mother, Alice, came from a similar background; both had left school young, and they were determined that my sister, Joyce, and I should have the education they had missed. We lived in a quiet suburban house, and I found life in that neat suburb, and at my school, rather dull. I loved to run, though. I ran everywhere, for the sheer thrill of it, and also, I admit, to escape bullies and to get home quickly. My father had won his school mile and fainted afterwards, as runners often did in those days, and he told me about it. When the war came in 1939, and the air-raid sirens began to wail over London, I ran as fast as I could whenever I heard them, imagining bombs falling behind me if I didn't. Soon afterwards my father's office was moved to Bath, and we went with it. At the City of Bath Boys' School I won acceptance by winning cross-country races. After the war we returned to London, where at University College School running was not much valued, and I sat the Oxford entrance exam at sixteen. At Exeter College, Oxford, I studied medicine and began to run seriously, and on 6 May 1954, at the Iffley Road track, I became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes. I went on to become a distinguished neurologist.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
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