ABSTRACT

Donald Woods Winnicott began his boarding-school career as a Fifth Form student, in tandem with twenty-one other boys. Frederick Winnicott would have held The Leys School in very high regard, because of its staunch and long-standing tradition of English Methodism and its status as a very respectable school for the middle classes. As the autumn term of 1910 unfolded, Donald Winnicott began to immerse himself in school life as one of the new boys. In general, The Leys School seems to have suited Donald well, because he certainly relished his studies and his many extracurricular activities. At boarding-school, Winnicott began to develop a very serious interest in the natural sciences, and he particularly enjoyed reading Charles Darwin's classic treatise of 1859, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.