📍Darjeeling, West Bengal 734101, India
1913 – 1931“I was born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, in the foothills of the Himalayas, on the 5th of November 1913, the only child of a British cavalry officer. Darjeeling was a hill station — the cool refuge from the Indian plains that the British Raj provided for its administrators — and my childhood there was colonial, privileged and beautiful: the tea gardens, the view of Kanchenjunga, the particular air of altitude. I was sent to convent school in England at six. The Darjeeling childhood was the most beautiful of beginnings — the mountain light, the colonial garden parties — and it produced a woman whose beauty contained something of that light.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
Sources: Edwards, A. Vivien Leigh: A Biography (1977), Simon & Schuster; Vickers, H. Vivien Leigh (1988), Little, Brown