journalist. Rupert Bruce-Mitford was born three years after his family returned from Japan. Three years later, his father left for India to work as an assistant editor at the Madras Mail. Eustace died following a short fever in 1919, when he was forty-four and Rupert five. Following the death of his father, Bruce-Mitford later wrote, "the family was stranded in London and fell on very hard times". His mother then earned roughly £220 a year (), of which she lent £120 () to Terence and Vidal, to be repaid after their studies, and spent 16s6d weekly () for part of a house. Bruce-Mitford was also frequently sick as a child, coming down with scarlet fever and diphtheria when aged two, and influenza when around six. The stresses on the family were substantial, and at one point Beatrice Bruce-Mitford had a breakdown, causing Rupert to be fostered for a time. Education Orphaned and poor, Rupert Bruce-Mitford was educated with the financial support of his mother's cousin. She did so, Bruce-Mitford later wrote, "on one condition – that my father's novel, depicting life in Yokohama at the turn of the century, should be burnt; she thought it immoral and scurrilous". Around 1920, Bruce-Mitford was thereby sent to Brightlands preparatory school in Dulwich, London, which his brothers Terence and Alec also attended, receiving scholarships to Dulwich College. Bruce-Mitford was baptised around the same time, perhaps to improve his later chances of admittance to the charity school Christ's Hospital. Five years later the Brightlands headmaster nominated Bruce-Mitford to take an examination for Christ's Hospital. Following success in the examination—covering the compulsory subjects of English, arithmetic and practical mensuration as well as all three optional subjects of Latin, French, and mathematics—and his mother's petition for him "to be Educated and Maintained among other poor Children", he was admitted on 17 September 1925. Bruce-Mitford was successful, and happy, at Christ's Hospital. He was also introduced to archaeology; in 1930 he participated in a dig with S. E. Winbolt at the Jacobean ironworks in Dedisham, Sussex. Winbolt wrote in the school magazine that "unhappily the 'dig' produced no useful results", but added that "possibly, however, the C.H. diggers learnt something", and named Bruce-Mitford "among willing helpers, mentioned honoris causa". Meanwhile, Bruce-Mitford was active in school events, including playing rugby and cricket, acting in (and directing the orchestra for) John Galsworthy's The Little Man, debating at the Horsham