I followed the controversy with mixed feelings. I was delighted of course at the book's success. At the same time I was distressed at being accused of having libelled the school where I had been so happy, to which I was so devoted, and to so many of whose masters--in particular its headmaster--I owed so much. Well, that is all a long long time ago, and usually nothing is more dead and dated than the book which once caused controversy. Yet _The Loom of Youth_ has continued to sell steadily from one year to the next; in 1928 it was included in Cassell's Pocket Library; in 1942 it was issued as a Penguin and now that the original plates are wearing out, Mr Martin Secker and the directors of The Richards Press feel that it is worth their while to reset the type and give the book another lease of life. I hope that their confidence will be justified. If it is, it will be for reasons very different from those which made _The Loom of Youth_ a best seller in 1917. The modern reader will find nothing here to shock or startle him. Several years ago a friend was reading the book in my company. "When do I reach _the_ scene?" he asked. I looked over his shoulder. "You've passed it, ten pages back," I told him. At the same time the book is not presented as a "period piece". Though England to-day is a different country, socially and economically, from what it was in 1911 when I went to Sherborne, I do not think that in essentials the life of the Public School boy has greatly changed. Most schools are larger than they were, but they have retained the same traditions and ideals; there is the same atmosphere of rivalry and competing loyalties; youth has the same basic problems, is fired by the same ambitions, beset by the same doubts. And if the modern reader, after turning a page or two finds his attention held and wants to go on reading, it will mean that this book has become at last what in fact it was always meant to be--a realistic but romantic story of healthy adolescence set against the background of an average English Public School. April, 1954. Alec Waugh BOOK I: WARP AND WOOF "While I lived I sought no wings, Schemed no heaven, planned no hell; But, content with little things, Made an earth and it was well." RICHARD MIDDLETON. CHAPTER I: GROPING