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Childhood and adolescence

White was born in Knightsbridge, London, on 28 May 1912. His Australian parents, Victor Martindale White, a wealthy sheep grazier, and Ruth (née Withycombe) were in England on an extended honeymoon. The family returned to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. As a child he lived in a flat with his sister, a nanny, and a maid while his parents lived in an adjoining flat. In 1916 they moved to a large house, "Lulworth", in Elizabeth Bay. At the age of four White developed asthma, a condition that had taken the life of his maternal grandfather, and his health was fragile throughout his childhood.

At the age of five he attended kindergarten at Sandtoft in Woollahra, close to their home. His mother often took him to plays and pantomimes and White developed a life long love of the theatre. Nevertheless, White felt closer to his nurse, Lizzie Clark, who taught him to tell the truth and "not blow his own trumpet".

In 1920, he attended Cranbrook School but his asthma worsened. Two years later he was sent to Tudor House School, a boarding school in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, where it was thought the climate would help his lungs. White enjoyed the freedom provided by the school where discipline was lax. He read widely from the school library, wrote a play and excelled at English. In 1924 the boarding school ran into financial trouble, and the headmaster suggested that White be sent to a public school in England.

In April 1925, his parents took White to England to enrol in Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire. In his first years at Cheltenham, he was withdrawn and had few friends. He found his housemaster to be sadistic and puritanical, and White's certitude of his own homosexuality increased his sense of isolation. He later wrote of Cheltenham, "When the gates of my expensive prison closed I lost confidence in my mother, and never forgave."

One of White's few pleasures was the time spent at the Sommerset home of his cousin, the painter Jack Withycombe. Jack's daughter Elizabeth Withycombe became a mentor to him while he was completing his first, privately-published, volume of verse, Thirteen Poems, written between 1927 and 1929. White also became friends with Ronald Waterall who was two years his senior at Cheltenham and shared his passion for the theatre. He and White would spend their holidays in London seeing as many shows as they could.

White asked his parents if he could leave school to become an actor. His parents compromised and allowed him to leave school without taking his final examinations if he came home to Australia to try life on the land. But their son had already changed his mind on his future profession and was determined to become a writer.

In December 1929, White left Cheltenham and sailed to Sydney. He spent two years working as a jackaroo on sheep stations at Bolaro in the Monaro district of New South Wales and at Barwon Vale in northern New South Wales. The landscapes impressed White and he wrote two unpublished novels during this time: "The Immigrants" and "Sullen Moon".

White's uncle, who owned Barwon Vale, convinced White's parents that their son was not suited to the life of a grazier. White's mother was happy for him to become a writer but she wanted him to have a career as a diplomat as well. On this basis his parents agreed to send him to Cambridge. While studying for the entrance examinations, White completed a third unpublished novel, "Finding Heaven".