My great-grandmother was born in London, the daughter of a Brixton coachman, and became the most famous singer in Australia. Her name was Marie Carandini, Madame Carandini.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I was born on 7 September 1917 at Sydney in Australia. My father was English-born and a graduate of Oxford; my mother, born Hilda Eipper, was descended from a German minister of religion who settled in New South Wales in 1832. I was the second of four children.
My sister was an actress when I was a kid - she still is a successful stage actress in Sweden.
My mother has been famous for longer than anyone else alive.
I've always said that Adele has turned so many people on to British singers - whether female singers or just like music from this country in general.
My mother was a singer, and both of her sisters were singers. There was always music around.
I was named after my mother. And I guess when I started making records, Madonna Ciccone seemed too long and complicated, and I just got stuck with Madonna.
I'm actually the son of Mary Guibert. My mother was born in the Panama Canal zone and came to America when she was five with my grandmother and grandfather, and that was the family I knew. Everybody sang; everybody had songs all the time, and they loved music.
My mother was a Bloomsbury figure: a great friend of TS Eliot, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell. My grandmother, Mary Hutchinson, gave her life to works of art, being an admirer of Matisse and Giaometti, whom I collected as a young man because of her.
I was born in the small city of Hobart in Tasmania, Australia, in 1948. My parents were family physicians. My grandfather and great grandfather on my mother's side were geologists.
I was a born singer.