Ayckbourn Chronology: 1939 - 1956
Notable Events
Alan Ayckbourn with his mother 'Lolly'.
© Haydonning Ltd
○ 1939: was born on 12 April in Hampstead to Irene Maud Worley, a writer, and Horace Ayckbourn, a violinist with the London Symphony Orchestra; decades later he would discover he was an illegitimate child. His mother was better known under her writing pseudonym Mary James and also affectionately called Lolly.
○ 1946: began attending Wisborough Lodge school, Billinghurst, West Sussex.
○ 1946 - 1951: Mother remarried; variously lived at Billinghurst, Wisborough Green, Horsham, Uckfield, Hayward's Heath and Lewes.
○ 1948: had his first work published when his poem The Old House was printed in the first issue of The Lodgean; the magazine of Wisborough Lodge school.
○ Circa 1950: wrote his first first play - an adaptation of the Jennings novels - whilst attending Wisborough Lodge school; intending to play the role of Darbyshire he was ill and neither acted in nor saw the play.
○ 1951: received a Barclays Bank scholarship to attend Haileybury and Imperial Service College near Hertford; now known simply as Haileybury.
○ 1954: had his first professionally published work with the poem Dawn printed in the December issue of Collins' Young Elizabethan magazine.
○ 1955: toured the Netherlands in a Haileybury production of Romeo And Juliet, in which he played Peter.
All research for this page by Simon Murgatroyd and copyright of Haydonning Ltd. Please do not reproduce without permission of the copyright holder.