Educated among the nation’s elite
JUSTIN Welby attended Eton from 1969 to 1974, where fellow pupils included Tory politician Oliver Letwin and actor Hugh Laurie.
He was able to go there because his mother, Jane Portal, was from a well-connected family and had worked as Winston Churchill’s secretary. His grandmother, the biographer Iris Portal, was the sister of the Conservative statesman ‘Rab’ Butler.
A contemporary described the young Welby as ‘the shyest, most unhappy-looking boy you could imagine’.
The archbishop has said Eton was ‘full of very gifted people’ but that he himself was ‘very mediocre’ in his time there.
He scored C, D and E grades in A-level history, English and French – a poor performance that he put down to the issues he was having with his alcoholic father.
Money problems meant that in his last two years the school waived the fees.
A former teacher said he was ‘a model boy, though quite undistinguished’.