Born on June 21 1948, Ian Russell McEwan grew up in Aldershot and at military stations in countries such as Singapore and Libya. His mother had two much older children from an earlier marriage, but McEwan always considered himself very much “an only child” right up to the point in 2007 when a long-lost brother was suddenly made known to him. The new sibling, David, was the product of an affair McEwan's mother had had with his father during the war, before they were married.

After an army childhood largely spent abroad, McEwan attended Woolverstone state boarding-school in Suffolk from 1959 to 1966. Subsequently he read English and French at the University of Sussex before enrolling for the modern fiction and creative writing …

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Citation: Childs, Peter. "Ian McEwan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 January 2001; last revised 24 August 2016. [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3041, accessed 29 March 2024.]

3041 Ian McEwan 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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