Brian was born in 1922 into a religious family who lived near Liverpool where his father was a jobber at the Liverpool Stock Exchange. He was the youngest of three brothers of whom the eldest, Frank, like Brian, studied medicine with a view to becoming a missionary in India. Brian began his studies in Edinburgh in 1940 and qualified with the ‘Scottish Triple’ in 1945. After house jobs at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and a period as Senior R.M.O. at the Royal Liverpool Children's Hospital. He was rejected for military service on medical grounds, so he decided to go to sea; he served with the Cunard White Star Line for the greater part of the 1950s. However, it was his contact with the crew and his involvement in negotiations to settle conflicts between them which most interested him and led to him to develop an interest in psychiatry. In the late 1950s he joined the junior staff at Warlingham Park Hospital in Surrey where he found himself among a stimulating group of trainees, many of whom later became distinguished in the psychiatric world. He obtained the DPM in 1961.