 He was born Orestis Stamatopoulos in 1916, near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire to Orestis Stamatopoulos, a Greek engineer who worked for a Lincolnshire engineering firm, and Edith Vessey, a working class Lincolnshire woman.Shortly after Saville's birth, his father was called to Greece for military service and was subsequently killed during the war.His mother remarried to widowed tailor Alfred Saville, and he was brought up in Romford.