Breaking the U.S: Macca’s grandson is off to Yale

While they were growing up on their farm in the Sussex countryside near Rye, their father, Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney, famously sent them to the local comprehensive in the hope they would have a ‘normal’ life. But Sir Paul’s children have, so far, failed to emulate him.

Stella — his younger daughter by his late first wife, linda — spurned her local state school to send her children to be privately educated at a ‘posh school’, where other parents included supermodels Claudia Schiffer and elle Macpherson.

Now i can disclose that the first of Sir Paul’s grandchildren is diverging further from the path of humdrum British experience.

Arthur Donald — eldest son of Stella’s photographer sister Mary — left £19,545-a-year University College School in hampstead, North london, this summer and has decided to continue his education at American college Yale, alma mater of five U.S. presidents including George W. Bush and his father, George h.W. Bush.

As one of America’s prestigious ivy league universities, Yale’s fees are hefty, with the university authorities advising that the ‘estimated cost of attendance’ for undergraduates is £54,500 per annum, of which £39,700 is for academic fees, the remainder being the cost of board, lodging, books and personal expenses.

happily, Yale’s accumulation of nearly £20 billion in endowment funds ensures it can meet the costs for those struggling to bear this burden.

it seems improbable that 18-yearold Arthur — Mary’s elder son by her first husband, TV producer Alistair Donald — will be among them, given his grandfather’s estimated £700 million fortune.

Mary, a close friend of Tony and Cherie Blair — they chose her to take the official portrait of them with their newly born son, leo, in 2000 — declines to comment on Arthur’s academic success. She has another son with Donald, and two more sons by her second husband, director and writer Simon Aboud.