 Born in London to a wealthy family, Michell was educated at Cheam School and Eton College before serving as a Russian translator in the Royal Navy for two years.After failing a degree in Russian and German at Trinity College, Cambridge, he returned to London and worked for his father's property business, there developing his interest in Ufology.Embracing the counter-cultural ideas of the Earth mysteries movement during the 1960s, in "The Flying Saucer Vision" he built on Alfred Watkins' ideas of ley lines by arguing that they represented linear marks created in prehistory to guide extraterrestrial spacecraft.