Alan John Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury (13 August 1902 – 21 October 1998), was a British business executive and a leading member of the supermarket Sainsbury family. Early and private life Sainsbury was the son of Mabel Miriam ( Van den Bergh) and John Benjamin Sainsbury. His paternal grandparents, John James Sainsbury and Mary Ann Staples, established a grocer's at 173 Drury Lane in 1869 which became the British supermarket chain Sainsbury's. His mother was from a Dutch Jewish family, the daughter of Jacob Van den Bergh. He and his first wife, Doreen, with whom he married in 1925 had three sons: John Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Preston Candover Simon David Davan Sainsbury Timothy, later Sir Timothy Alan Davan Sainsbury He later remarried in 1944 and had a daughter, Paulette. As he was divorced from his first wife, he spent little time with his sons John Davan, Simon and Timothy, and so they only got to know their father when they joined the family firm. On 3 May 1962, he was the first of three members of the Sainsbury family to receive a life peerage. He took the title Baron Sainsbury, of Drury Lane in the Borough of Holborn. As the first peerage using the family name, the territorial designation – referencing the location of the family's first shop – did not form part of the title. When Alan's son John became a peer in 1989, he took the title Baron Sainsbury of Preston Candover to differentiate between them. In the same way, when Alan's nephew David was ennobled in 1997 he was made Baron Sainsbury of Turville. Business career Educated at Haileybury College, Alan joined Sainsbury's in 1921 aged 17, the same year his youngest uncle, Paul Sainsbury, joined the family firm. He began his career working alongside his uncles as a buyer. He became a director of the Company, then known as J. Sainsbury Ltd., in 1933 and became joint managing director of Sainsbury's with his brother Robert Sainsbury in 1938 after his father, John Benjamin Sainsbury (the eldest son of Sainsbury's founder John James Sainsbury), had a minor heart attack. He was always known to the Sainsbury's workforce as 'Mr Alan'. Alan Sainsbury was instrumental in bringing the self-service supermarket to Britain and shaping many of the conditions by which we shop for food today. On a trip to America he saw the experience of self-service supermarkets, and