David Niven

Niven's paternal great-grandfather and namesake, David Graham Niven, (1811–1884) was from St Martin's, a village in Perthshire.

A physician, he married in Worcestershire, and lived in Pershore.

Niven's mother, Henriette, was born in Brecon, Wales.

Her father was Captain (brevet Major) William Degacher (1841–1879) of the 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot, who was killed at the Battle of Isandlwana during the Anglo-Zulu War in 1879.

Although born William Hitchcock, in 1874, he and his older brother Lieutenant Colonel Henry Degacher (1835–1902), both followed their father, Walter Henry Hitchcock, in taking their mother's maiden name of Degacher.

Henriette's mother was Julia Caroline Smith, the daughter of Lieutenant General James Webber Smith CB.

He had two older sisters and a brother: Margaret Joyce Niven (1900–1981), Henry Degacher Niven (1902–1953), and the sculptor Grizel Rosemary Graham (1906–2007), who created the bronze sculpture Bessie that is presented to the annual winners of the Women's Prize for Fiction.

Niven later claimed he was born in Kirriemuir, in the Scottish county of Angus in 1909, but his birth certificate disproves this.

James David Graham Niven (1 March 1910 – 29 July 1983 ) was a British actor, soldier, memoirist, and novelist.

Niven was known as a handsome and debonair leading man in Classic Hollywood films.

He received an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

Born in central London to an upper-middle-class family, Niven attended Heatherdown Preparatory School and Stowe School before gaining a place at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

After Sandhurst, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry.

James David Graham Niven was born on 1 March 1910 at Belgrave Mansions, Grosvenor Gardens, London, to William Edward Graham Niven (1878–1915) and his wife, Henrietta Julia (née Degacher) Niven (1878–1932).

He was named David after his birth on St David's Day.

Niven's father, William Niven, was of Scottish descent; he was killed in the First World War serving with the Berkshire Yeomanry during the Gallipoli campaign on 21 August 1915.

He is buried in Green Hill Cemetery, Turkey, in the Special Memorial Section in Plot F. 10.

After her husband's death in Turkey in 1915, Henrietta Niven remarried in London in 1917 to Conservative politician Sir Thomas Comyn-Platt (1869–1961).

The family moved to Rose Cottage in Bembridge on the Isle of Wight after selling their London home.

Literary editor and biographer, Graham Lord, wrote in Niv: The Authorised Biography of David Niven, that Comyn-Platt and Niven's mother may have been in an affair well before her husband's death in 1915 and that Comyn-Platt was actually Niven's biological father, a supposition that had some support among Niven's siblings.

In a review of Lord's book, Hugh Massingberd from The Spectator stated photographic evidence did show a strong physical resemblance between Niven and Comyn-Platt that "would appear to confirm these theories, though photographs can often be misleading."

Upon developing an interest in acting, he found a role as an extra in the British film There Goes the Bride (1932).

Bored with the peacetime army, he resigned his commission in 1933, relocated to New York, then travelled to Hollywood.

There, he hired an agent and had several small parts in films through 1935, including a non-speaking role in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Mutiny on the Bounty (1935).

This helped him gain a contract with Samuel Goldwyn.

Parts, initially small, in major motion pictures followed, including Dodsworth (1936), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), and The Prisoner of Zenda (1937).

By 1938, he was starring as a leading man in films such as Wuthering Heights (1939).

Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, Niven returned to Britain and rejoined the army, being recommissioned as a lieutenant.

In 1942, he co-starred in the morale-building film about the development of the renowned Supermarine Spitfire fighter plane, The First of the Few (1942).

Other notable films during this time period include A Matter of Life and Death (1946), The Bishop's Wife (1947), Enchantment (1948), The Elusive Pimpernel (1950), The Moon Is Blue (1953), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), My Man Godfrey (1957), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Murder by Death (1976), and Death on the Nile (1978).

He went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Separate Tables (1958).

He also earned acclaim and notoriety playing Sir Charles Lytton in The Pink Panther (1963) and James Bond in Casino Royale (1967).

In his 1971 biography, The Moon's a Balloon, Niven wrote fondly of his childhood home:

"It became necessary for the house in London to be sold and our permanent address was now as advertised — a cottage which had a reputation for unreliability. When the East wind blew, the front door got stuck and when the West wind blew, the back door could not be opened – only the combined weight of the family seemed to keep it anchored to the ground. I adored it and was happier there than I had ever been, especially because, with a rare flash of genius, my mother decided that during the holidays she would be alone with her children. Uncle Tommy was barred – I don't know where he went – to the Carlton Club I suppose."

Niven is said to have revealed that he knew Comyn-Platt was his real father a year before his own death in 1983.

After his mother remarried, Niven's stepfather had him sent away to boarding school.

In The Moon's a Balloon, Niven described the bullying, isolation, and abuse he endured as a six-year-old.

He said that older pupils would regularly assault younger boys, while the schoolmasters were not much better.

Niven wrote of one sadistic teacher:

"Mr Croome, when he tired of pulling ears halfway out of our heads (I still have one that sticks out almost at right-angles thanks to this son of a bitch) and delivering, for the smallest mistake in Latin declension, backhanded slaps that knocked one off one's bench, delighted in saying, 'Show me the hand that wrote this' — then bringing down the sharp edge of a heavy ruler across the offending wrist."