David Bowie is born

David Robert Jones was born on 8 January 1947, in Brixton, south London.

He was born at the family home at 40 Stansfield Road. His father, Haywood Stenton ‘John’ Jones, was a promotions officer for the children’s charity Barnardo’s, and his mother, Margaret Mary ‘Peggy’ Jones (née Burns), worked as a waitress.

I was born in London 1947, after the war. A real wartime baby. I went to school in Brixton and then I moved up to Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. I lived on the farms up there. So I’ve seen pretty well the best of both from the terrible slum area of Brixton, with a pretty heavy black population, to right up in the country on the farms. I’ve been a child through both so that both halves of it really influenced me and produced a schizoid attitude in life. I think that’s what confused me, because having seen the best of both I couldn’t cope with a lot of problems that were around.

The couple married nine months after David’s birth. Haywood was divorced from his first wife, and Peggy had previously been engaged to a Frenchman who left her when she became pregnant with a son, Terry, who was born in 1937.

In 1953 the family moved from Stansfield Road to Plaistow Grove in Bromley, Greater London, and shortly afterwards David began attending Burnt Ash Junior School. He was known to be a gifted pupil with an early interest in music and performing arts.