SALMAN RUSHDIE

I came from India to [boarding school] Rugby in England when I was 13. I had no idea that I would be judged as someone who was different to the others because I wasn’t English white. It really was a harsh awakening. It gave me a difficult time in these early years, I was quite unhappy. I was a conventional public-school conservative. That reflected my experience; I came from a fairly conservative, well-off Indian family and I’d been put into a school with boys from similar families from other places. I was a conformist, a good boy. I guess I did my rebelling later on.

I was very worried when I went to university in England that it would be a continuation of the same racist treatment. But my father convinced me it was a very good thing