ABSTRACT
George Orwell’s Burmese Days is based, of course, on his own experiences in the Burma Police in the years after he left Eton-that is in the early twenties. There can be no doubt that this experience played a great part in his life. His family had close connections with India; he was born in Bengal, where his father was an official in the Opium Department. One day an attempt will doubtless be made, coolly and objectively, to analyse the effect on the English of their association with India. It is a fascinating subject, and whoever undertakes dealing with it will have plenty of data in works of fiction, from Vanity Fair to Plain Tales from the Hills or A Passage to India. Burmese Days belongs essentially to this tradition. It is a study of the human factor in the British Raj.
