Richard Branson was born in 1950, and educated at Stowe School, where he established a national magazine called Student at the age of sixteen. He started a student advisory service centre aged 17 to help young people. In 1970 he founded Virgin as a mail order record company and shortly after opened a record shop in Oxford Street, London. During 1972, a recording studio was built in Oxfordshire where the first Virgin artist, Mike Oldfield, recorded “Tubular Bells” which was released in 1973.
