ABSTRACT
Reginald McKenna was born in Bayswater, London, on 6 July 1863, of an Irish family. He was at one with his uncle Reggie, who remained resolutely unconcerned with the more arcane aspects of his genealogy; he was a man who appeared to regard all aspects of genealogy as arcane. Private enterprise provided the possibility of some stability to family life back in England, but, since it depended on Reggie's father, it was still capricious. In 1871, Reggie went to school at St. Malo, in France, until he was eleven, and thence, with Ernest, at Ebersdorf near Bamberg, in Germany, until he was fourteen. One challenge Reggie set himself was debating at the Cambridge Union, but the most important was his routine of reading the writings of Edmund Burke aloud for several minutes every morning. He served his pupillage from 1888 to 1894 at 1, Dr Johnson's Buildings, Temple, E. C. McKenna's first case was in 1888, and his last in 1895.
