"My parents were born in Norfolk and spent their early years working in the big houses of that rural English county, my mother as a cook and my father as a handyman and chauffeur"
About this Quote
The diction is plain, almost stubbornly unadorned. “Born in Norfolk,” “rural English county,” “cook,” “handyman and chauffeur” - these aren’t romanticized archetypes; they’re job titles. That specificity functions as proof. It signals credibility without bragging, and it blocks the comforting myth that success simply blooms from talent. The line “spent their early years working” adds a temporal pressure: this wasn’t a brief brush with hardship, but a formative landscape.
Subtextually, Nurse is staking a claim about mobility and belonging in British public life. Scientists are often framed as disembodied minds, floating above biography. He refuses that. By naming domestic labor and the architecture of privilege, he implies that knowledge is never class-neutral: who gets time, schooling, confidence, and institutional welcome is historically patterned. The intent isn’t grievance; it’s calibration. He’s asking the reader to see scientific achievement not as an escape from society, but as a product of it - and, implicitly, as an argument for widening the doors that were once built to stay shut.
Quote Details
| Topic | Family |
|---|---|
| Source | Paul Nurse — Biography/Autobiography, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2001 laureate page; biographical note states parents born in Norfolk, mother a cook, father a handyman and chauffeur. |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Nurse, Paul. (n.d.). My parents were born in Norfolk and spent their early years working in the big houses of that rural English county, my mother as a cook and my father as a handyman and chauffeur. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-parents-were-born-in-norfolk-and-spent-their-128535/
Chicago Style
Nurse, Paul. "My parents were born in Norfolk and spent their early years working in the big houses of that rural English county, my mother as a cook and my father as a handyman and chauffeur." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-parents-were-born-in-norfolk-and-spent-their-128535/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"My parents were born in Norfolk and spent their early years working in the big houses of that rural English county, my mother as a cook and my father as a handyman and chauffeur." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-parents-were-born-in-norfolk-and-spent-their-128535/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.
