Douglas Robert Jardine was born to Scottish parents in the exclusive Malabar Hill section of Bombay in October 1900. In retrospect, his birth came arguably at the absolute apex of the British Empire. Bloemfontein, Johannesburg and Pretoria had all recently been captured, and the war in South Africa was (erroneously) thought to be won. The aged Queen still sat comfortably on her throne and oversaw an empire upon which the sun famously never set. The viceregality of Lord Curzon was less than a year old and gave no sign of diminishing prospects for the Raj. Even far off in the Antipodes, the upcoming federation of the six colonies into the Commonwealth of Australia on the first day of the new century seemed to be more a culmination of the promise of empire than a harbinger of its dissolution. In short, Malcolm and Allison Jardine welcomed their only son into a predictable, stable world in which any person in their position could feel confident about the future, secure in the knowledge that British values had shown themselves to be the basis for civilisation as proven by a great empire. In keeping with the tradition of the time, young Douglas was sent back to Britain at the age of nine to be educated. He attended Horris Hill Preparatory School and Winchester before going up to Oxford in 1919, where his cricketing prowess outshone his academic performance. Although he quickly earned his blue as a freshman, he finished with only a fourth-class degree in modern history.