Terence Hanbury White was the only child of Garrick White, a District Superintendent of Police in colonial India, and Constance Aston, the daughter of a judge. White's father was part-Irish and his mother was Scottish with some French blood in her family. White spent his first five years in India and claimed later that his first language had been Hindustani (Townsend Warner 1967, 26). He disliked and feared his mother, who took him for granted.
Brought to Britain by his parents in 1911, he was left there to live with his maternal grandparents in Cheltenham, and three cousins, while his parents, their marriage deteriorating, returned separately to India. “For six years I grew straight and rampaged and was protected” (Townsend Warner 1967, 28). In 1920 he went to Cheltenham College.
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Citation: Macdonald, Kate. "T. H. White". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 August 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4695, accessed 25 November 2024.]
