Alexander Henry Paterson came into this world on Thursday the 20th November 1884, the fourth and last child of Alexander Edgar and Katharine Esther Paterson of Bowdon in the county of Cheshire.

The new-born's father was a thirty-two-year-old solicitor, the son of an Altrincham surgeon after whom Alec was named. His mother was a Dixon who, although she hailed from Hampshire, traced her roots back to both the north-west of England, as her own mother was from Cheshire, and, more distantly, on her father's side, to Scotland. She was a quiet and compassionate person, adored by her children.

The eldest of Alec's siblings was his sister, Dorothy, who at the time of his birth was four years old. His two older brothers were Willis, aged three, and Claude, who was still a toddler, just sixteen months old. With little difference in age the four youngsters would have been playmates and friends, although there may have been some sibling rivalry between Claude and Alec as the latter had displaced his infant brother as the baby of the family. Judging from later life, it seems he was closest to Dorothy, or ‘Dor’ as she was called by Alec, ‘Dorkin’ by Claude, and ‘Dodo’ by others. He was ‘her baby’. We first set eyes on the children in a watercolour by their aunt Nellie, by then a celebrated artist. There they are, her niece and nephews painting at a table, Alec second from the left, small boy with a big head’, probably about five years old. They are neat little‘a children, well-cared for and well-nourished.

Theirs was a comfortable, cosy and Christian household, but it was certainly not conformist, religiously or politically. Their parents were in faith Unitarians and in politics Liberals (a large portrait of William Ewart Gladstone, the ‘grand old man’, dominated their dining room) when many of their neighbours in Bowdon were Anglicans and Tories.

Alec's family, though presently pillars of society, were pedigree Dissenters. Paterson is a Scottish name and his father's family's roots lay in what Victorians would call North Britain.