Editing Alan Ayckbourn (section)

===Childhood===

Ayckbourn was born in [[Hampstead]], London.<ref name=p9>P. Allen, 2001, p. 9</ref><ref name=webbio>[http://biography.alanayckbourn.net/index.htm Biography on the official Alan Ayckbourn website] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080807160544/http://biography.alanayckbourn.net/styled/
|date=7 August 2008 }} accessed 17 April 2019</ref> His mother, Irene Worley ("Lolly") (1906–1998), was a writer of short stories who published under the name "Mary James".<ref>P. Allen, 2001, p. 10</ref> His father, Horace Ayckbourn (1904–1965), was an orchestral violinist and was the lead violinist at the [[London Symphony Orchestra]].<ref>P. Allen, 2001, p. 6</ref> His parents, who separated shortly after [[World War II]], never married, and Ayckbourn's mother divorced her first husband to marry again in 1948.<ref name=p9/>

Ayckbourn wrote his first play at Wisborough Lodge (a preparatory school in the village of [[Wisborough Green]]) when he was about 10.<ref>P. Allen, 2001, p. 20</ref> While he was at prep school as a boarder, his mother wrote to tell him she was marrying Cecil Pye, a bank manager. His new family consisted of his mother, his stepfather and Christopher, his stepfather's son by an earlier marriage. This relationship too, reportedly ran into difficulties early on.<ref>P. Allen, 2001, pp. 17–19</ref>

Ayckbourn attended [[Haileybury and Imperial Service College]], in the village of [[Hertford Heath]] and, while there, he toured Europe and America with the school's Shakespeare company.<ref name=webbio/><ref>P. Allen, 2001, pp. 30–33</ref>