of biased and misleading coverage to support his business interests and political allies, and some have credited his influence with major political developments in the UK, US, and Australia. Early life Keith Rupert Murdoch was born on 11 March 1931 in Melbourne, the second of four children of Sir Keith Murdoch (1885–1952) and Dame Elisabeth (; 1909–2012). He is of English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry. His parents were also born in Melbourne. His father was a war correspondent and later a regional newspaper magnate owning two newspapers in Adelaide and a radio station in a faraway mining town, and chairman of the Herald and Weekly Times publishing company. Murdoch had three sisters: Helen (1929–2004), Anne (born 1935) and Janet (born 1939). His Scottish-born paternal grandfather, Patrick John Murdoch, was a Presbyterian minister. Later in life, Murdoch chose to go by his second name, the first name of his maternal grandfather. He attended Geelong Grammar School, where he was co-editor of the school's official journal The Corian and editor of the student journal If Revived. He took his school's cricket team to the National Junior Finals. He worked part-time at the Melbourne Herald and was groomed by his father to take over the family business. Murdoch studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Worcester College, Oxford, in England, where he kept a bust of Lenin in his rooms and came to be known as "Red Rupert". He was a member of the Oxford University Labour Party, stood for Secretary of the Labour Club and managed Oxford Student Publications Limited, the publishing house of Cherwell. After his father's death from cancer in 1952, his mother did charity work as life governor of the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne and established the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute; at the age of 102 (in 2011), she had 74 descendants. Murdoch completed an MA before working as a sub-editor with the Daily Express for two years. Activities in Australia and New Zealand Following his father's death, when he was 21, Murdoch returned from Oxford to take charge of what was left of the family business. After liquidation of his father's Herald stake to pay taxes, what was left was News Limited, which had been established in 1923. Rupert Murdoch turned its Adelaide newspaper, The News, its main asset, into a major success. He began to direct his attention to acquisition and expansion, buying the troubled Sunday Times