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John Dimitri Negroponte. Born in London on July 21, 1939, just before the outbreak of the second world war, he was the son of Dimitri, a Greek shipping magnate, and Catherine. He grew up in England, Switzerland and New York, where his father settled. He became a product of elite American institutions, educated at Phillips Exeter prep school in New Hampshire and at Yale, before being accepted at Harvard Law School. Negroponte is connected to Britain's royal family and British intelligence through his wife, Diana Villiers. Diana's father was Sir Charles Villiers, a merchant banker who would rise to become chairman of British Steel. Villiers had a powerful social conscience.