Preface to the Ukrainian Edition I have been asked to write a preface to the Ukrainian
translation of Animal Farm. I am aware that I write for
readers about whom I know nothing, but also that they
too have probably never had the slightest opportunity to
know anything about me.
In this preface they will most likely expect me to say
something of how Animal Farm originated but first I
would like to say something about myself and the ex-
periences by which I arrived at my political position.
I was born in India in 1903. My father was an official
in the English administration there, and my family was
one of those ordinary middle-class families of soldiers,
clergymen, government officials, teachers, lawyers, doc-
tors, etc. I was educated at Eton, the most costly and
snobbish of the English Public Schools
†
. But I had only
got in there by means of a scholarship; otherwise my
father could not have afforded to send me to a school of
this type.
†
These are not public “national schools”, but something quite the op-
posite: exclusive and expensive residential secondary schools, scattered
far apart. Until recently they admitted almost no one but the sons of
rich aristocratic families. It was the dream of nouveau riche bankers of
the nineteenth century to push their sons into a Public School. At such
schools the greatest stress is laid on sport, which forms, so to speak,
a lordly, tough and gentlemanly outlook. Among these schools, Eton is
