Michael was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy (class of 1953) and Harvard University (anthropology), where he met his wife Louisa B. Hunnewell of Wellesley, MA. The couple left the USA at the end of the 1950s to study, and Michael took a postgraduate course in anthropology at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was awarded his Doctorate. As part of his studies, he had lived with the Wachagga tribe in Tanzania for 14 months. Academic life did not entirely suit him, however, and he tried his hand at journalism, with a stint on the Boston Globe as a reporter.