Sent by his father to Maiden Erlegh House School at Earley, Berkshire, a school with absolutely no academic pretensions, he was left largely to his own devices. At the age of fifteen he moved to the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School at Cricklewood, but took himself out of the school in 1940. Following a brief interlude in London, he escaped the Blitz to Workington, Cumbria where he had two years of excellent teaching at the local technical school and discovered a lifelong passion for mountain walking.