He was born Eric Blair. Most of us know him as George Orwell, the skeletal, moustachioed prophet of the surveillance state. But before he was dodging bullets in the Spanish Civil War or coughing up blood in a Jura farmhouse while writing 1984, he was a "King’s Scholar" at the most prestigious school on the planet. Honestly, the George Orwell alma mater is a bit of a paradox. We're talking about Eton College. Yes, that Eton. The place that churns out Prime Ministers like a factory line and remains the ultimate symbol of the British establishment.
It’s weird, right? The guy who wrote The Road to Wigan Pier and spent his life championing the working man was educated alongside the ultra-rich. He wore a stiff collar. He played the Wall Game. He learned Latin and Greek in a setting so steeped in privilege it makes Hogwarts look like a local community center.
The King's Scholar at Eton College
Orwell didn't get into Eton because his dad was a billionaire. Far from it. Richard Walmesley Blair was a mid-level civil servant in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. They were "lower-upper-middle class," as Orwell famously put it. He got in on a scholarship. He was smart. Very smart.
Being a King's Scholar meant he lived in "College," a specific set of medieval buildings, rather than the "Oppidan" houses where the paying students lived. There’s a certain grit to that. You're the brainy kid among the aristocrats. It’s a position that breeds observation. You're in the room, but you aren't quite of the room. This outsider-insider status is arguably where his obsession with class began. He wasn't just learning history; he was watching how power worked from the inside.
Did he love it? Probably not. Orwell later claimed he was "relatively happy" at Eton, which is high praise from a man who usually found life miserable. But he also didn't do much work. He drifted. His academic record was mediocre because he stopped caring about the curriculum. He read what he wanted. He became a rebel in a very quiet, English way.
Aldous Huxley was his French teacher
Think about that for a second. The author of Brave New World taught the author of 1984 how to conjugate French verbs. It’s one of those historical coincidences that feels too scripted to be real. Huxley was a substitute teacher at Eton for a brief stint. Reports suggest he wasn't a great teacher—he was too brilliant and too visually impaired to keep a room of rowdy teenagers in check. But the intellectual DNA in that classroom was staggering.
Orwell didn't go to university after Eton. That's a huge detail people miss. Most of his peers went straight to Oxford or Cambridge. He didn't. Instead, he joined the Imperial Police in Burma. He swapped the Gothic spires of his George Orwell alma mater for the heat and filth of the British Empire's outposts. This choice was partially financial and partially a rejection of the path laid out for him.
Life Before Eton: St Cyprian’s and the trauma of "Such, Such Were the Joys"
You can't understand his time at Eton without looking at where he was before. From age eight to thirteen, he attended St Cyprian’s, a preparatory school in Eastbourne. If Eton was a place of intellectual freedom, St Cyprian’s was a nightmare.
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His essay Such, Such Were the Joys is a brutal takedown of this school. He describes a world of bed-wetting shame, beatings, and the constant reminder that he was a "charity case." The headmaster and his wife, whom he called "Sambo" and "Flip," ran the place like a tiny autocracy.
- He felt physically inferior.
- He was told he was a failure.
- He learned that "the law" was something that was applied differently to the rich and the poor.
This was the appetizer. By the time he reached his George Orwell alma mater, he was already cynical. He already knew that the British class system was a game of smoke and mirrors. Eton actually gave him the space to breathe after the suffocating atmosphere of prep school.
The Eton Influence on 1984
It sounds like a stretch to link a posh boarding school to a dystopian nightmare, but look closer. Eton is famous for its "Election" system and its private language. It has its own slang, its own codes, and its own hierarchy.
When Orwell wrote about "the Party" or the inner workings of a ruling elite, he wasn't just guessing. He had lived in a miniature version of it. The way the "Proles" in 1984 are viewed as a different species mirrors exactly how some of the more arrogant Etonians of that era viewed the local townspeople. He saw how language could be used to exclude others. He saw how a small group of people could believe they were destined to rule the world simply because of where they went to school.
Why he never went to University
Most people assume a writer of Orwell’s caliber must have been an Oxford man. Nope. By the time he finished at Eton in 1921, his family's finances were tight, and his own academic standing wasn't high enough to snag a university scholarship.
He was done with being a "scholar." He wanted "real life."
The decision to join the Indian Imperial Police was a sharp left turn. It took him away from the literary circles of London and shoved him into the reality of colonial rule. This was the most important pivot of his life. Without the contrast between the polished halls of his George Orwell alma mater and the gritty reality of life in Burma, we wouldn't have the Orwell we know. He needed that shock. He needed to see the "dirty work of Empire" to realize he wanted no part of it.
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The "Old Etonian" Tag: A lifelong burden?
Orwell spent much of the 1930s trying to shed his Etonian skin. He changed his name. He went "down and out" in Paris and London. He dressed in rags. He tried to speak with a less "plummy" accent.
But you can't ever really leave Eton. His friends—people like Cyril Connolly—were all from that same world. Even when he was living in poverty, he still carried the confidence of an Eton education. He knew how to write. He knew how to argue. He knew that, despite his bank balance, he was intellectually equal (or superior) to anyone in the room.
There is a funny story about Orwell at a party later in life. Someone asked him why he didn't like the "common people" as much as he claimed in his writing. He was supposedly offended. But the truth is, he was always an intellectual. He was always a product of the George Orwell alma mater, even when he was washing dishes in a Paris hotel. He hated the system, but the system had given him the very tools he used to dismantle it.
Factual breakdown of Orwell's education timeline
To keep things clear, here is how his schooling actually flowed:
St Cyprian’s School (1911–1916): The prep school phase. High pressure, lots of Latin, and a general sense of misery that fueled his later essays on childhood.
Wellington College (1917): He actually spent one term here before his scholarship for Eton came through. It was a brief, forgettable blip.
Eton College (1917–1921): The definitive George Orwell alma mater. He was in "College" (the scholarship section). He was classmates with future greats like Steven Runciman and was taught by Huxley.
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The "University of Life": No formal degree. His education continued in the jungles of Burma, the slums of London, and the trenches of Spain.
How to explore the Orwell-Eton connection today
If you're a fan of his work, you can actually visit the town of Eton. It’s right across the river from Windsor. You can walk past the school buildings. You can see the chapel. You can get a sense of the sheer scale of the place.
- Check out the Eton College Collections: They have archives that include records of Orwell (as Eric Blair). Sometimes they put his early writings or school records on display.
- Read "Such, Such Were the Joys": It’s the best way to understand his psychological state before he reached Eton. It’s brutal but necessary.
- Contrast with "The Road to Wigan Pier": Read the first half of this book, where he describes the living conditions of miners, and then remember he learned to write while living in a 15th-century dormitory. The contrast is the whole point of Orwell.
Practical Insights for the Modern Reader
What do we actually take away from the fact that the greatest anti-authoritarian writer of the 20th century went to the most authoritarian school in England?
First, education isn't destiny. You can be trained by the "elite" and still choose to fight for the marginalized. Orwell used his privilege to amplify the voices of people who had none. He didn't just "check his privilege"; he weaponized it against the very people who gave it to him.
Second, the "outsider" perspective is often the most valuable. Orwell was never quite wealthy enough to be comfortable at Eton, and he was never quite poor enough to be a natural member of the working class. He lived in the gaps. If you feel like an outsider in your own "alma mater" or workplace, use it. That distance allows you to see the truth that everyone else is too comfortable to notice.
Finally, ignore the labels. People tried to dismiss Orwell as a "champagne socialist" or a "fake" because of his background. He ignored them and kept writing. He knew that the truth of his words mattered more than the school tie he was entitled to wear.
If you want to dive deeper into how his schooling affected his writing style, look at his essay Politics and the English Language. You can see the Etonian influence in his demand for clarity and his hatred of "pretentious diction." He was taught to write well, and then he used those skills to tell the world exactly what was wrong with the people who taught him.
The George Orwell alma mater wasn't just a school for him. It was the first "Big Brother" he had to learn to outsmart. By the time he left, he was ready for anything the world—or the Party—could throw at him.