 Born in Liverpool in 1924 and grew up spending half the year there and half the year in his other family home in South Kensington, London.He is, on his mother's side, the great-grandson of Jakob Zeugheer-Herrmann, the first conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, who conducted for Paganini and Jenny Lind.Another maternal ancestor is Sir Jonah Barrington, the Irish High Court Judge, who was also a writer and author of several classic volumes of Irish history and local chatter and colour.