Holly Branson praises father Sir Richard Branson, shares adorable new picture for heartwarming reason

Sir Richard Branson’s daughter Holly has revealed her nine-year-old son Artie has dyslexia, posting an adorable picture of her father with Artie as a toddler playing chess.

In the caption, Holly, who is also mom to Artie’s twin sister Etta and five-year-old daughter Lola, thanked her father for writing a “lovely piece” about how everyone’s uniqueness is their superpower. 

“‘Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.’ This quote just says it all – especially when it comes to education. With a dyslexic child (just like his granddad), it means a lot to me whenever Dad writes about neurodiversity,” wrote Holly.

In the blog, Richard, who also has dyslexia, wrote that “it takes all sorts of people with all sorts of skills to create positive and exciting things in the world”, adding: “I stumbled upon this realization early on in my career, when my dyslexic thinking led me to find new solutions to old problems that businesses were struggling to address. Over the years, I learnt to harness my dyslexic thinking, and embrace the curious ways my mind would work.“

© Dave Benett

The picture showed Richard and Artie, around the age of three, sitting on a long wooden bench playing chess. They appeared to be on Necker Island, the 74 acre island the Branson family owns in the Caribbean. 

Holly’s husband Freddie also is dyslexic, and the family’s company Virgin has long been heralded for their important work with the charity Made by Dyslexia, which helps businesses to ensure they understand, value and support employees with dyslexia. 

© Nat Jag

Other famous faces who have proudly spoken about their dyslexia include Princess Beatrice, whose dyslexia was detected aged seven, and is determined to change the narrative around dyslexia – something she affectionately refers to as her “gift” and “learning difference”. 

“Even referring to it as a diagnosis, I feel, does a disservice to the brilliance of some of the most fantastic minds that we have,” Beatrice – who is close friends with Holly – told HELLO! in 2021.

“I was very lucky that when I was first told that I had dyslexia, not one person around me ever made me feel like it was a ‘lesser than’ scenario,” she continued. 

“It was always about moving forward, it was always about what you could do. Never about what you can’t. And that’s something that’s really, really important to me. I find it very inspiring every day to talk about it. Because if you can just change one little idea in someone’s head, then you’ve done a great thing.”