 Land was born in Berlin into a well-off Jewish family who fled to the UK in 1939 in the aftermath of Kristallnacht.He and his brother changed their name from Landsberger to Land on the advice of a careers advisor at the LSE.Land was educated at Willesden County Grammar School from 1943-1947 and after graduating in Economics from the LSE in 1950, he joined the London food and catering enterprise J. Lyons, working on the first electronic computer designed for business use, the LEO I with his colleague Mary Coombs.