William S. Heckscher
From 1918 to 1921, the family lived in the Netherlands while Heckscher's father served as the Weimar Republic's ambassador to The Hague; there, Heckscher enrolled at the Nederlandsch Lyceum. Heckscher pursued his interests in history and Flemish art by spending his off hours studying at the Dutch Royal Library, the Mauritshuis and the Kröller-Müller Museum, but was dismissed from the Lyceum in 1920 for "lack of scholarly potential". After the family returned to Hamburg, Heckscher attended the city's Kunstgewerbeschule, now the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, but failed a class in ceramics.
Hugh Laurie
Laurie was brought up in Oxford and attended the Dragon School from ages seven to 13 and stated, "I was, in truth, a horrible child. Not much given to things of a bookey nature, I spent a large part of my youth smoking Number Six and cheating in French vocabulary tests." He went on to Eton College, which he describes as "the most private of private schools". He says he attended Selwyn College, Cambridge "as a result of family tradition" as his father "went to Cambridge and I applied to the same college". Laurie notes his father had a successful bout as an oarsman at Cambridge and that he was "trying to follow in his father's footsteps". He read archaeology and anthropology, specialising in social anthropology.