Soon after Don's birth, his parents changed the name on his birth certificate to Montagu Denis Don due to a family spat over the name. When Don was 10, he added his mother's maiden name to it, becoming Montagu Denis Wyatt Don. Don is a descendant of botanist George Don and the Keiller family, best known as the inventors of Keiller's marmalade. On his maternal side, he is descended from the Wyatt family of architects. Don has a twin sister, Alison, who at the age of 19 was nearly killed in a car accident, suffering a broken neck and blindness. When Don was one, the family moved to Hampshire, England. He described his parents as "very strict". He attended three independent schools: Quidhampton School in Basingstoke, followed by Bigshotte School in Wokingham, where at seven, he was asked to leave school for being too boisterous. He then attended Malvern College in Malvern, which he hated, followed by a state comprehensive school, the Vyne School, also in Basingstoke. He failed his A-levels and while studying for retakes at night school, worked on a building site and a pig farm by day. During his childhood he had become an avid gardener and farmer. In his late teens, Don spent several months in Aix-en-Provence, France where he worked as a gardener and played rugby in local teams. He returned to England, determined to attend Cambridge University out of "sheer bloody-mindedness", and passed the entrance exams. He studied English at Magdalene College, during which time he met his future wife Sarah Erskine, a trained jeweller and architect. Don took up boxing to impress his father, a former heavyweight boxing champion in the army, becoming a Cambridge Half Blue for boxing. He gave up after getting knocked out and suffering concussion. ![]() In 1981, Don and Erskine started Monty Don Jewellery, a London-based business that designed, made, and sold costume jewellery. ![]() The company became a success and in five years, operated from a shop on Beauchamp Place in Knightsbridge with hundreds of outworkers and had secured as many as 60 outlets across the UK, including Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Liberty. Among their customers were Boy George, Michael Jackson, and Princess Diana. However, the 1987 stock market crash caused an almost complete bankruptcy as it cut off American sales, their biggest market.
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