ABSTRACT
For a British person of a certain class and generation living in 2015, the social and cultural world into which Wilfred Bion was born can feel both archaic and strangely familiar. It invites satire and post-colonial unease, alongside a lingering, respectful fascination. Bion came into being and consciousness in India while the Raj was at its height. His vivid accounts of his childhood in the Punjab are, however, anything but nostalgic imperial celebration. Bion's insistence on finding "terms derived from sensuous experience" goes some way to accounting for the sheer evocative and metaphorical force of his memoirs. In many respects the teenage Bion had been well prepared for the very large group of the British army by his experiences to date, at least in so far as they had maintained him, as he was to put it himself, in a state of ignorance.