BRANSON’S EDUCATION TIMELINE:

1954 Branson was educated at Scaitcliffe School, a prep school in Egham, Surrey, whose former pupils include Peter Palumbo and the biographer Michael Holroyd.

Early 1960s He attended Stowe School, an independent school in Buckinghamshire until the age of sixteen. Throughout his schooling Branson’s academic performance is poor. Headmaster Robert Drayson predicts he will end up in prison or become a millionaire.

1967 He created Student Magazine, intended to be the first in a series of businesses relevant to students. It failed but is integral to the creation of the Virgin brand in the early 1970s.

1972 He founded Virgin Records, signing such controversial bands as the Sex Pistols.

1984 Formed Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Cargo.

1992 Branson receives the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, joining other notables to have been awarded the prize including future friend Barack Obama, as well as Jeff Bezos and Bob Dylan.

1993 Branson is awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Technology from Loughborough University.

2004 Formed Virgin Galactic, with the goal of taking paying passengers into suborbital space.

2007 Launched the Virgin Earth Challenge, alongside former Vice-President Al Gore, aimed at removing harmful greenhouse gas effects, but the $25 million prize was never awarded.

2020 During the coronavirus pandemic, with revenues down 60 per cent, attracted criticism for asking his staff to take eight weeks’ unpaid leave and dad instilled in my siblings and I are lessons that have lasted a lifetime,” he recalls. “They taught us the importance of hard work, of not taking yourself too seriously, of treating people how you wish to be treated, of entrepreneurship, and so much more. They showed us how family is the most important thing in the world and surrounded us with love and encouragement.”

Of course, it was never plain-sailing. Not long before James’s death, Branson mère and père gave an interesting interview to the Wall Street Journal where Eve in particular eschews diplomatic language: “Let’s say he [Richard] was unusual at school. We didn’t know whether he was 99 per cent stupid and one per cent rather exceptional. We hung onto that one per cent.”

This is the sort of joke only an affectionate mother would make and there’s no doubting Branson as he recalls: “I was inspired by how my mum used her entrepreneurial energy to help others. I spend a lot of time now working with the Virgin Group’s foundation,Virgin Unite, to challenge the unacceptable and to try and find entrepreneurial solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems. My mum is always an inspiration, spurring me on and encouraging me to think bigger.”

School’s Out

At first, thinking big meant leaving school. Many who have been to Stowe school, with its spreading Capability Brown gardens, will feel they could happily walk there forever. It is telling that Branson was immediately restless: even at this distance, knowing what he went on to achieve, you can sense his itchiness to get on.

In 1967, Branson founded Student magazine - a magazine not dissimilar in intention and readership to the one you are reading. It still seems an odd choice of first venture for someone with professed dyslexia. At the time, he thought it would be the making of him. In reality, it turned out to be something as important: his first mistake. “I’m only where I am today because I’ve failed along the way,” he tells me. “That’s a failure which always stands out to me, failing to convince a major publishing house to invest in Student magazine. Even as a teenager, I had a huge vision for a whole host of new Student enterprises, from magazines to travel companies to banks. Unsurprisingly, they ran a mile.”

Was that beneficial to him in the long run? “I didn’t know it back then, but this was the seed of an idea that grew into becoming the Virgin brand. I carried on building businesses I loved and believed in. Fast-forward half a century and Virgin spans even more sectors than I dreamed of as a teenager.”

You get the sense that these failures give him perspective now during the difficulties of the pandemic.

When Branson founded the Virgin record store in Oxford Street in the early 1970s, there was a dicey episode when Branson’s parents had to re-mortgage the family home after Branson ran into difficulty with the tax authorities, having been caught selling discount records for export only. Eve would later tell the Wall Street Journal in her brisk way: “That was pretty horrifying.”

Over time Virgin Records - whose value had been increased by the signing of numerous artists, including Mike Oldfield and his Tubular Bells album - would go global and eventually sell for around £560 million. Even then, Branson wasn’t completely out of the woods. Libel litigation lay ahead between the newly founded Virgin Atlantic and British Airways. Branson won a record payment of $945,000 in damages, famously sharing the award with the employees.

Good Company

As significant as his financial success, Branson had created a style of doing business which caught the public imagination. In time, column inches accrued in a way not wholly dissimilar from the way in which on the other side of the Atlantic they accrued for Donald

Trump. Different in numerous other respects, both were perfect magazine fodder for the excesses of the 1980s.

However allegedly shy, Branson was a natural front man for his businesses. Keen to find out more about his business ethos, I ask him how he keeps his staff happy and motivated.

Barack Obama kitesurfing at Necker Island, just after leaving office in 2016 (Press Association)

“I’ve always said, take care of your employees and they’ll take care of your business,” Branson replies.

And that’s a principle still true in the age of Covid-19? “While it’s been the most challenging year for all businesses, what has kept me going is the spirit and resilience from our people across the Virgin Group. Our people really are the thing that makes our brand different and special, we are lucky to have a brilliant group of people who believe in what they’re trying to do, which is to change business for good.”

Of course, most businesses will parrot that line. With Branson you sense his sincerity - partly because he was among the first to talk like this. “Over the years we have always tried to give our people the freedom to be themselves and to treat them like adults,” Branson elaborates. What does this mean dayto-day? “One example is our unlimited holiday policy at Virgin Management. We introduced this a few years ago and the response has been very positive. The assumption behind it is that people will only take leave when they feel comfortable that they and their team are up to date on every project and like a pandemic-conscious company before anyone had heard of Wuhan or the South African variant: “We’ve offered flexible working at Virgin Management for many years, long before the pandemic,” he explains. “I’ve never worked in an office, or ‘nine to five’ for that matter. Obviously, this doesn’t work for every single role across our businesses, for example a pilot, but we try and encourage it where it’s possible.”