 Firrell was educated in England but left school unofficially at 14 because he "had no more use for it".He educated himself during his absence from school by walking and reading in the Norfolk countryside.He read early 20th-century literature extensively, citing the works of Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and the French writer Marguerite Duras (with whom he shares his birthday and a high degree of political sympathy) as key influences on his later development.