H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

A Modern Utopia ''A Modern Utopia'' is a 1905 novel by H. G. Wells. Because of the complexity and sophistication of its narrative structure, ''A Modern Utopia'' has been called "not so much a modern as a postmodern utopia."Michael Sherborne, ''H.G. Wells: Anot ...

''. During this period, he also enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacintha's brother and sister. StCyprians

While at St Cyprian's, Blair wrote two poems that were published in the '' Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard''. He came second to Connolly in the Harrow History Prize, had his work praised by the school's external examiner, and earned scholarships to

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...

and Eton. But inclusion on the Eton scholarship roll did not guarantee a place, and none was immediately available for Blair. He chose to stay at St Cyprian's until December 1916, in case a place at Eton became available. In January, Blair took up the place at Wellington, where he spent the Spring term. In May 1917 a place became available as a

King's Scholar A King's Scholar is a foundation scholar (elected on the basis of good academic performance and usually qualifying for reduced fees) of one of certain public schools. These include Eton College; The King's School, Canterbury; The King's School ...

at Eton. At this time the family lived at Mall Chambers, Notting Hill Gate. Blair remained at Eton until December 1921, when he left midway between his 18th and 19th birthday. Wellington was "beastly", Blair told Jacintha, but he said he was "interested and happy" at Eton. His principal tutor was A. S. F. Gow, Fellow of

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

, who also gave him advice later in his career. Blair was briefly taught French by

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxle ...

. Steven Runciman, who was at Eton with Blair, noted that he and his contemporaries appreciated Huxley's linguistic flair. Cyril Connolly followed Blair to Eton, but because they were in separate years, they did not associate with each other. Blair's academic performance reports suggest that he neglected his studies, but during his time at Eton he worked with Roger Mynors to produce a college magazine, ''The Election Times'', joined in the production of other publications—''College Days'' and ''Bubble and Squeak''—and participated in the Eton Wall Game. His parents could not afford to send him to a university without another scholarship, and they concluded from his poor results that he would not be able to win one. Runciman noted that he had a romantic idea about the

East East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...

, and the family decided that Blair should join the Imperial Police, the precursor of the Indian Police Service. For this he had to pass an entrance examination. In December 1921 he left Eton and travelled to join his retired father, mother, and younger sister Avril, who that month had moved to 40 Stradbroke Road,

Southwold Southwold is a seaside town and civil parish on the English North Sea coast in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk. It lies at the mouth of the River Blyth within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The town is ...

, Suffolk, the first of their four homes in the town. Blair was enrolled at a

crammer A cram school, informally called crammer and colloquially also referred to as test-prep or exam factory, is a specialized school that trains its students to achieve particular goals, most commonly to pass the entrance examinations of high school ...

there called Craighurst, and brushed up on his Classics, English, and History. He passed the entrance exam, coming seventh out of the 26 candidates who exceeded the pass mark.

Policing in Burma

Blair's maternal grandmother lived at

Moulmein Mawlamyine (also spelled Mawlamyaing; , ; th, เมาะลำเลิง ; mnw, မတ်မလီု, ), formerly Moulmein, is the fourth-largest city in Myanmar (Burma), ''World Gazetteer'' south east of Yangon and south of Thaton, at th ...

, so he chose a posting in

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

, then still a province of British India. In October 1922 he sailed on board SS ''Herefordshire'' via the Suez Canal and Ceylon to join the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. A month later, he arrived at Rangoon and travelled to the police training school in Mandalay. He was appointed an Assistant District Superintendent (on probation) on 29 November 1922, with effect from 27 November and at the pay of

Rs. Rupee is the common name for the currencies of India, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka, and of former currencies of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates (as the Gulf rupee), British East Africa, B ...

525 per month. After a short posting at

Maymyo Pyin Oo Lwin or Pyin U Lwin (, ; Shan: ), formerly and colloquially referred to as Maymyo (), is a scenic hill town in the Mandalay Region, Myanmar, some east of Mandalay, and at an elevation of . The town was estimated to have a population of ...

, Burma's principal hill station, he was posted to the frontier outpost of

Myaungmya Myaungmya ( my, မြောင်းမြမြို့ ) is a town in Myaungmya Township, Ayeyarwady Region, Myanmar. The town is home to the Myanmar Union Adventist Seminary, a Seventh-day Adventist seminary and Myaungmya Education College. ...

in the

Irrawaddy Delta The Irrawaddy Delta or Ayeyarwady Delta lies in the Irrawaddy Division, the lowest expanse of land in Myanmar that fans out from the limit of tidal influence at Myan Aung to the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, to the south at the mouth of the ...

at the beginning of 1924. Working as an imperial police officer gave him considerable responsibility while most of his contemporaries were still at university in England. When he was posted farther east in the Delta to Twante as a sub-divisional officer, he was responsible for the security of some 200,000 people. At the end of 1924, he was posted to Syriam, closer to Rangoon. Syriam had the refinery of the

Burmah Oil Company The Burmah Oil Company was a leading British oil company which was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. In 1966, Castrol was acquired by Burmah, which was renamed "Burmah-Castrol". BP Amoco (now BP) purchased the company in 2000. History ...

, "the surrounding land a barren waste, all vegetation killed off by the fumes of sulphur dioxide pouring out day and night from the stacks of the refinery." But the town was near Rangoon, a cosmopolitan seaport, and Blair went into the city as often as he could, "to browse in a bookshop; to eat well-cooked food; to get away from the boring routine of police life". In September 1925 he went to Insein, the home of

Insein Prison Insein Prison ( my, အင်းစိန်ထောင်) is located in Yangon Division, near Yangon (Rangoon), the old capital of Myanmar (formerly Burma). From 1988 to 2011 it was run by the military junta of Myanmar, named the State Law an ...

, the second largest prison in Burma. In Insein, he had "long talks on every conceivable subject" with Elisa Maria Langford-Rae (who later married Kazi Lhendup Dorjee). She noted his "sense of utter fairness in minutest details".Michael Shelden ''Orwell: The Authorised Biography'', William Heinemann, 1991 By this time, Blair had completed his training and was receiving a monthly salary of Rs. 740, including allowances. KatharBritishClub

In Burma, Blair acquired a reputation as an outsider. He spent much of his time alone, reading or pursuing non-'' pukka'' activities, such as attending the churches of the Karen ethnic group. A colleague, Roger Beadon, recalled (in a 1969 recording for the BBC) that Blair was fast to learn the language and that before he left Burma, "was able to speak fluently with Burmese priests in 'very high-flown Burmese'." Blair made changes to his appearance in Burma that remained for the rest of his life, including adopting a

pencil moustache A pencil moustache is a thin moustache found adjacent to, or a little above the lip. The style is neatly clipped, so that the moustache takes the form of a thin line, as if it had been drawn using a pencil. A large gap is left between the nose an ...

. Emma Larkin writes in the introduction to ''Burmese Days'', "While in Burma, he acquired a moustache similar to those worn by officers of the British regiments stationed there. ealso acquired some tattoos; on each knuckle he had a small untidy blue circle. Many Burmese living in rural areas still sport tattoos like this—they are believed to protect against bullets and snake bites." In April 1926 he moved to Moulmein, where his maternal grandmother lived. At the end of that year, he was assigned to Katha in

Upper Burma Upper Myanmar ( my, အထက်မြန်မာပြည်, also called Upper Burma) is a geographic region of Myanmar, traditionally encompassing Mandalay and its periphery (modern Mandalay, Sagaing, Magway Regions), or more broadly speak ...

, where he contracted dengue fever in 1927. Entitled to a

leave Leave may refer to: * Permission (disambiguation) ** Permitted absence from work *** Leave of absence, a period of time that one is to be away from one's primary job while maintaining the status of employee *** Annual leave, allowance of time away ...

in England that year, he was allowed to return in July due to his illness. While on leave in England and on holiday with his family in

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

in September 1927, he reappraised his life. Deciding against returning to Burma, he resigned from the Indian Imperial Police to become a writer, with effect from 12 March 1928 after five-and-a-half years of service. He drew on his experiences in the Burma police for the novel ''

Burmese Days ''Burmese Days'' is the first novel by English writer George Orwell, published in 1934. Set in British Burma during the waning days of empire, when Burma was ruled from Delhi as part of British India, the novel serves as "a portrait of the dark ...

'' (1934) and the essays "

A Hanging A Hanging (1931) is a short essay written by George Orwell, first published in August 1931 in the British literary magazine '' The Adelphi''. Set in Burma, where Orwell (under his real name of Eric Arthur Blair) had served in the British Imperial P ...

" (1931) and "

Shooting an Elephant "Shooting an Elephant" is an essay by British writer George Orwell, first published in the literary magazine '' New Writing'' in late 1936 and broadcast by the BBC Home Service on 12 October 1948. The essay describes the experience of the Englis ...

" (1936).

London and Paris

George_Orwell's_Home,_Notting_Hill,_London

In England, he settled back in the family home at

, renewing acquaintance with local friends and attending an

Old Etonian Eton College () is a public school in Eton, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1440 by Henry VI under the name ''Kynge's College of Our Ladye of Eton besyde Windesore'',Nevill, p. 3 ff. intended as a sister institution to King's College, ...

dinner. He visited his old tutor Gow at Cambridge for advice on becoming a writer. In 1927 he moved to London. Ruth Pitter, a family acquaintance, helped him find lodgings, and by the end of 1927 he had moved into rooms in

Portobello Road Portobello Road is a street in the Notting Hill district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London. It runs almost the length of Notting Hill from south to north, roughly parallel with Ladbroke Grove. On Saturdays it is ...

; a blue plaque commemorates his residence there. Pitter's involvement in the move "would have lent it a reassuring respectability in Mrs. Blair's eyes." Pitter had a sympathetic interest in Blair's writing, pointed out weaknesses in his poetry, and advised him to write about what he knew. In fact he decided to write of "certain aspects of the present that he set out to know" and ventured into the East End of London—the first of the occasional sorties he would make to discover for himself the world of poverty and the down-and-outers who inhabit it. He had found a subject. These sorties, explorations, expeditions, tours or immersions were made intermittently over a period of five years. In imitation of

Jack London John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to ...

, whose writing he admired (particularly ''

The People of the Abyss ''The People of the Abyss'' (1903) is a book by Jack London, containing his first-hand account of several weeks spent living in the Whitechapel district of the East End of London in 1902. London attempted to understand the working-class of thi ...

''), Blair started to explore the poorer parts of London. On his first outing he set out to Limehouse Causeway, spending his first night in a common lodging house, possibly George Levy's "kip". For a while he "went native" in his own country, dressing like a

tramp A tramp is a long-term homeless person who travels from place to place as a vagrant, traditionally walking all year round. Etymology Tramp is derived from a Middle English verb meaning to "walk with heavy footsteps" (''cf.'' modern English ''t ...

, adopting the name P.S. Burton and making no concessions to middle-class ''

mores Mores (, sometimes ; , plural form of singular , meaning "manner, custom, usage, or habit") are social norms that are widely observed within a particular society or culture. Mores determine what is considered morally acceptable or unacceptable ...

'' and expectations; he recorded his experiences of the low life for use in " The Spike", his first published essay in English, and in the second half of his first book, ''

Down and Out in Paris and London ''Down and Out in Paris and London'' is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell, published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities. Its target audience was the middle- and upper-cl ...

'' (1933). Rue du Pot-de-Fer

In early 1928 he moved to Paris. He lived in the rue du Pot de Fer, a working class district in the 5th arrondissement. His aunt Nellie Limouzin also lived in Paris and gave him social and, when necessary, financial support. He began to write novels, including an early version of ''Burmese Days'', but nothing else survives from that period. He was more successful as a journalist and published articles in ''

Monde A ''monde'', meaning 'world' in French, is an orb located near the top of a crown. It represents, as the name suggests, the world that the monarch rules. It is the point at which a crown's half arches meet. It is usually topped off either w ...

'', a political/literary journal edited by

Henri Barbusse Henri Barbusse (; 17 May 1873 – 30 August 1935) was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party. He was a lifelong friend of Albert Einstein. Life The son of a French father and an English mother, Barbusse was born in Asnièr ...

(his first article as a professional writer, "La Censure en Angleterre", appeared in that journal on 6 October 1928); '' G. K.'s Weekly'', where his first article to appear in England, "A Farthing Newspaper", was printed on 29 December 1928; and ''Le Progrès Civique'' (founded by the left-wing coalition Le Cartel des Gauches). Three pieces appeared in successive weeks in ''Le Progrès Civique'': discussing unemployment, a day in the life of a tramp, and the beggars of London, respectively. "In one or another of its destructive forms, poverty was to become his obsessive subject—at the heart of almost everything he wrote until ''

Homage to Catalonia ''Homage to Catalonia'' is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations fighting in the Spanish Civil War for the POUM militia of the Republican army. Published in 1938 (about a year before the war ended) with little c ...

''." He fell seriously ill in February 1929 and was taken to the

Hôpital Cochin The Hôpital Cochin is a hospital of public assistance in the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Jacques Paris 14e. It houses the central burn treatment centre of the city. The Hôpital Cochin is a section of the Faculté de Médecine Paris-Descartes. It comm ...

in the 14th arrondissement, a free hospital where medical students were trained. His experiences there were the basis of his essay " How the Poor Die", published in 1946. He chose not to identify the hospital, and indeed was deliberately misleading about its location. Shortly afterwards, he had all his money stolen from his lodging house. Whether through necessity or to collect material, he undertook menial jobs such as dishwashing in a fashionable hotel on the

rue de Rivoli Rue de Rivoli (; English: "Rivoli Street") is a street in central Paris, France. It is a commercial street whose shops include leading fashionable brands. It bears the name of Napoleon's early victory against the Austrian army, at the Battle of R ...

, which he later described in ''Down and Out in Paris and London''. In August 1929, he sent a copy of " The Spike" to

John Middleton Murry John Middleton Murry (6 August 1889 – 12 March 1957) was an English writer. He was a prolific author, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime. ...

's '' New Adelphi'' magazine in London. The magazine was edited by

Max Plowman Mark Plowman, generally known as Max Plowman, (1 September 1883 – 3 June 1941) was a British writer and pacifist. Life to 1918 He was born in Northumberland Park, Tottenham, Middlesex. He left school at 16, and worked for a decade in his fath ...

and Sir Richard Rees, and Plowman accepted the work for publication.

Southwold

In December 1929 after nearly two years in Paris, Blair returned to England and went directly to his parents' house in

, a coastal town in Suffolk, which remained his base for the next five years. The family was well established in the town, and his sister Avril was running a tea-house there. He became acquainted with many local people, including Brenda Salkeld, the clergyman's daughter who worked as a gym-teacher at St Felix Girls' School in the town. Although Salkeld rejected his offer of marriage, she remained a friend and regular correspondent for many years. He also renewed friendships with older friends, such as Dennis Collings, whose girlfriend Eleanor Jacques was also to play a part in his life. In early 1930 he stayed briefly in

Bramley, Leeds Bramley is a district in west Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It is part of the City of Leeds Ward of Bramley and Stanningley with a population of 21,334 at the 2011 Census. The area is an old industrial area with much 19th century archit ...

, with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey Dakin, who was as unappreciative of Blair as when they knew each other as children. Blair was writing reviews for ''Adelphi'' and acting as a private tutor to a disabled child at Southwold. He then became tutor to three young brothers, one of whom, Richard Peters, later became a distinguished academic. "His history in these years is marked by dualities and contrasts. There is Blair leading a respectable, outwardly eventless life at his parents' house in Southwold, writing; then in contrast, there is Blair as Burton (the name he used in his down-and-out episodes) in search of experience in the kips and spikes, in the East End, on the road, and in the hop fields of Kent." He went painting and bathing on the beach, and there he met Mabel and Francis Fierz, who later influenced his career. Over the next year he visited them in London, often meeting their friend Max Plowman. He also often stayed at the homes of Ruth Pitter and Richard Rees, where he could "change" for his sporadic tramping expeditions. One of his jobs was domestic work at a lodgings for half a crown (two shillings and sixpence, or one-eighth of a pound) a day.Stella Judt "I once met George Orwell" in ''I once Met'' 1996 Blair now contributed regularly to ''Adelphi'', with "

" appearing in August 1931. From August to September 1931 his explorations of poverty continued, and, like the protagonist of '' A Clergyman's Daughter'', he followed the East End tradition of working in the Kent hop fields. He kept a diary about his experiences there. Afterwards, he lodged in the Tooley Street kip, but could not stand it for long, and with financial help from his parents moved to Windsor Street, where he stayed until Christmas. "Hop Picking", by Eric Blair, appeared in the October 1931 issue of ''

New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British Political magazine, political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney Webb, Sidney and Beatrice ...

'', whose editorial staff included his old friend Cyril Connolly. Mabel Fierz put him in contact with Leonard Moore, who became his literary agent in April 1932. At this time Jonathan Cape rejected ''A Scullion's Diary'', the first version of ''Down and Out''. On the advice of Richard Rees, he offered it to Faber and Faber, but their editorial director, T. S. Eliot, also rejected it. Blair ended the year by deliberately getting himself arrested, so that he could experience Christmas in prison, but after he was picked up and taken to

Bethnal Green Bethnal Green is an area in the East End of London northeast of Charing Cross. The area emerged from the small settlement which developed around the Green, much of which survives today as Bethnal Green Gardens, beside Cambridge Heath Road. By ...

police station in the East End of London the authorities did not regard his "drunk and disorderly" behaviour as imprisonable, and after two days in a cell he returned home to Southwold.

Teaching career

In April 1932 Blair became a teacher at The Hawthorns High School, a school for boys, in Hayes, West London. This was a small school offering private schooling for children of local tradesmen and shopkeepers, and had only 14 or 16 boys aged between ten and sixteen, and one other master. While at the school he became friendly with the curate of the local parish church and became involved with activities there. Mabel Fierz had pursued matters with Moore, and at the end of June 1932, Moore told Blair that

Victor Gollancz Sir Victor Gollancz (; 9 April 1893 – 8 February 1967) was a British publisher and humanitarian. Gollancz was known as a supporter of left-wing causes. His loyalties shifted between liberalism and communism, but he defined himself as a Chris ...

was prepared to publish ''A Scullion's Diary'' for a £40 advance, through his recently founded publishing house,

Victor Gollancz Ltd Victor Gollancz Ltd () was a major British book publishing house of the twentieth century and continues to publish science fiction and fantasy titles as an imprint of Orion Publishing Group. Gollancz was founded in 1927 by Victor Gollancz, an ...

, which was an outlet for radical and socialist works. At the end of the summer term in 1932, Blair returned to Southwold, where his parents had used a legacy to buy their own home. Blair and his sister Avril spent the holidays making the house habitable while he also worked on ''Burmese Days''. He was also spending time with Eleanor Jacques, but her attachment to Dennis Collings remained an obstacle to his hopes of a more serious relationship. River Orwell Shore - geograph

"Clink", an essay describing his failed attempt to get sent to prison, appeared in the August 1932 number of ''Adelphi''. He returned to teaching at Hayes and prepared for the publication of his book, now known as ''Down and Out in Paris and London''. He wished to publish under a different name to avoid any embarrassment to his family over his time as a "tramp". In a letter to Moore (dated 15 November 1932), he left the choice of pseudonym to Moore and to Gollancz. Four days later, he wrote to Moore, suggesting the pseudonyms P. S. Burton (a name he used when tramping), Kenneth Miles, George Orwell, and H. Lewis Allways. He finally adopted the pen name George Orwell because "It is a good round English name." The name George was inspired by the patron saint of England, and Orwell after the

River Orwell The River Orwell flows through the county of Suffolk in England from Ipswich to Felixstowe. Above Ipswich, the river is known as the River Gipping, but its name changes to the Orwell at Stoke Bridge, where the river becomes tidal. It broadens in ...

in Suffolk which was one of Orwell's favourite locations. ''Down and Out in Paris and London'' was published by Victor Gollancz in London on 9 January 1933 and received favourable reviews, with Cecil Day-Lewis complimenting Orwell's "clarity and good sense", and ''

The Times Literary Supplement ''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp. History The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication ...

'' comparing Orwell's eccentric characters to the characters of Dickens. ''Down and Out'' was modestly successful and was next published by

Harper & Brothers Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins based in New York City. History J. & J. Harper (1817–1833) James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishin ...

in New York. In mid-1933 Blair left Hawthorns to become a teacher at Frays College, in

Uxbridge Uxbridge () is a suburban town in west London and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Hillingdon. Situated west-northwest of Charing Cross, it is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. Uxb ...

, west London. This was a much larger establishment with 200 pupils and a full complement of staff. He acquired a motorcycle and took trips through the surrounding countryside. On one of these expeditions he became soaked and caught a chill that developed into pneumonia. He was taken to a

cottage hospital A cottage hospital is a semi-obsolete type of small hospital, most commonly found in the United Kingdom. The original concept was a small rural building having several beds.The Cottage Hospitals 1859–1990, Dr. Meyrick Emrys-Roberts, Tern Publicati ...

in Uxbridge, where for a time his life was believed to be in danger. When he was discharged in January 1934, he returned to Southwold to convalesce and, supported by his parents, never returned to teaching. He was disappointed when Gollancz turned down ''Burmese Days'', mainly on the grounds of potential suits for libel, but Harper were prepared to publish it in the United States. Meanwhile, Blair started work on the novel '' A Clergyman's Daughter'', drawing upon his life as a teacher and on life in Southwold. Eleanor Jacques was now married and had gone to Singapore and Brenda Salkeld had left for Ireland, so Blair was relatively isolated in Southwold—working on the allotments, walking alone and spending time with his father. Eventually in October, after sending ''A Clergyman's Daughter'' to Moore, he left for London to take a job that had been found for him by his aunt Nellie Limouzin.

Hampstead

This job was as a part-time assistant in Booklovers' Corner, a second-hand bookshop in Hampstead run by Francis and Myfanwy Westrope, who were friends of Nellie Limouzin in the Esperanto movement. The Westropes were friendly and provided him with comfortable accommodation at Warwick Mansions, Pond Street. He was sharing the job with Jon Kimche, who also lived with the Westropes. Blair worked at the shop in the afternoons and had his mornings free to write and his evenings free to socialise. These experiences provided background for the novel ''

Keep the Aspidistra Flying ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying'', first published in 1936, is a socially critical novel by George Orwell. It is set in 1930s London. The main theme is Gordon Comstock's romantic ambition to defy worship of the money-god and status, and the dis ...

'' (1936). As well as the various guests of the Westropes, he was able to enjoy the company of Richard Rees and the ''Adelphi'' writers and Mabel Fierz. The Westropes and Kimche were members of the

Independent Labour Party The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates ...

, although at this time Blair was not seriously politically active. He was writing for the ''Adelphi'' and preparing ''A Clergyman's Daughter'' and ''Burmese Days'' for publication. GEORGE ORWELL 1903-1950 Novelist and Political Essayist lived here

GEORGE ORWELL 1903-1950 Novelist and Political Essayist lived here

At the beginning of 1935 he had to move out of Warwick Mansions, and Mabel Fierz found him a flat in Parliament Hill. ''A Clergyman's Daughter'' was published on 11 March 1935. In early 1935 Blair met his future wife

Eileen O'Shaughnessy Eileen Maud Blair (née O'Shaughnessy, 25 September 1905 – 29 March 1945) was the first wife of George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair). During World War II, she worked for the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information in London and ...

, when his landlady, Rosalind Obermeyer, who was studying for a master's degree in psychology at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

, invited some of her fellow students to a party. One of these students, Elizaveta Fen, a biographer and future translator of

Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...

, recalled Blair and his friend

Richard Rees Sir Richard Lodowick Edward Montagu Rees, 2nd Baronet (4 April 1900 – 24 July 1970) was a British diplomat, writer and painter. Rees was the son of Sir John Rees, 1st Baronet and his wife Mary Catherine Dormer. His sister was the pilot Rose ...

"draped" at the fireplace, looking, she thought, "moth-eaten and prematurely aged." Around this time, Blair had started to write reviews for '' The New English Weekly''. In June, ''Burmese Days'' was published and Cyril Connolly's positive review in the ''New Statesman'' prompted Blair to re-establish contact with his old friend. In August, he moved into a flat, at 50 Lawford Road,

Kentish Town Kentish Town is an area of northwest London, England in the London Borough of Camden, immediately north of Camden Town. Less than four miles north of central London, Kentish Town has good transport connections and is situated close to the open ...

, which he shared with Michael Sayers and Rayner Heppenstall. The relationship was sometimes awkward and Blair and Heppenstall even came to blows, though they remained friends and later worked together on BBC broadcasts. Blair was now working on ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying'', and also tried unsuccessfully to write a serial for the ''

News Chronicle The ''News Chronicle'' was a British daily newspaper. Formed by the merger of '' The Daily News'' and the ''Daily Chronicle'' in 1930, it ceased publication on 17 October 1960,''Liberal Democrat News'' 15 October 2010, accessed 15 October 2010 be ...

''. By October 1935 his flatmates had moved out and he was struggling to pay the rent on his own. He remained until the end of January 1936, when he stopped working at Booklovers' Corner. In 1980,

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

honoured Orwell with a blue plaque at his Kentish Town residence.

''The Road to Wigan Pier''

At this time, Victor Gollancz suggested Orwell spend a short time investigating social conditions in economically depressed

Northern England Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North Country, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It broadly corresponds to the former borders of Angle Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Kingdom of Jorvik, and the ...

. Two years earlier,

J. B. Priestley John Boynton Priestley (; 13 September 1894 – 14 August 1984) was an English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and social commentator. His Yorkshire background is reflected in much of his fiction, notably in ''The Good Compa ...

had written about England north of the Trent, sparking an interest in reportage. The Depression had also introduced a number of working-class writers from the North of England to the reading public. It was one of these working-class authors, Jack Hilton, whom Orwell sought for advice. Orwell had written to Hilton seeking lodging and asking for recommendations on his route. Hilton was unable to provide him lodging, but suggested that he travel to

Wigan Wigan ( ) is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, on the River Douglas. The town is midway between the two cities of Manchester, to the south-east, and Liverpool, to the south-west. Bolton lies to the north-east and Warrington t ...

rather than Rochdale, "for there are the colliers and they're good stuff." On 31 January 1936, Orwell set out by public transport and on foot, reaching

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

via

Coventry Coventry ( or ) is a city in the West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its city status until the Middle Ages. The city is governed b ...

, Stafford, the Potteries and Macclesfield. Arriving in Manchester after the banks had closed, he had to stay in a common lodging-house. The next day he picked up a list of contacts sent by Richard Rees. One of these, the trade union official Frank Meade, suggested

, where Orwell spent February staying in dirty lodgings over a

tripe Tripe is a type of edible lining from the stomachs of various farm animals. Most tripe is from cattle, pigs and sheep. Types of tripe Beef tripe Beef tripe is made from the muscle wall (the interior mucosal lining is removed) of a cow's st ...

shop. At Wigan, he visited many homes to see how people lived, took detailed notes of housing conditions and wages earned, went down Bryn Hall coal mine, and used the local public library to consult public health records and reports on working conditions in mines. During this time, he was distracted by concerns about style and possible libel in ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying''. He made a quick visit to

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

and during March, stayed in south Yorkshire, spending time in

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...

and Barnsley. As well as visiting mines, including

Grimethorpe Grimethorpe is a large village in the metropolitan borough of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. Historically within the West Riding of Yorkshire, it had a population of 4,672 at the 2011 census. Grimethorpe is located to the east of Barnsl ...

, and observing social conditions, he attended meetings of the Communist Party and of

Oswald Mosley Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician during the 1920s and 1930s who rose to fame when, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. He was a member ...

("his speech the usual claptrap—The blame for everything was put upon mysterious international gangs of Jews") where he saw the tactics of the

Blackshirts The Voluntary Militia for National Security ( it, Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale, MVSN), commonly called the Blackshirts ( it, Camicie Nere, CCNN, singular: ) or (singular: ), was originally the paramilitary wing of the Nation ...

("...one is liable to get both a hammering and a fine for asking a question which Mosley finds it difficult to answer."). He also made visits to his sister at

Headingley Headingley is a suburb of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, approximately two miles out of the city centre, to the north west along the A660 road. Headingley is the location of the Beckett Park campus of Leeds Beckett University and Headingley ...

, during which he visited the Brontë Parsonage at

Haworth Haworth () is a village in the City of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, in the Pennines, south-west of Keighley, west of Bradford and east of Colne in Lancashire. The surrounding areas include Oakworth and Oxenhope. Nearby villages inc ...

, where he was "chiefly impressed by a pair of

Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë (, commonly ; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She enlisted i ...

's cloth-topped boots, very small, with square toes and lacing up at the sides." Wigan Pier - geograph

Orwell needed somewhere he could concentrate on writing his book, and once again help was provided by Aunt Nellie, who was living at

Wallington, Hertfordshire Wallington is a small village and civil parish in the North Hertfordshire district, in the county of Hertfordshire, England, near the town of Baldock. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 Census was 150. Nearby villages include Rushden ...

in a very small 16th-century cottage called the "Stores". Wallington was a tiny village 35 miles north of London, and the cottage had almost no modern facilities. Orwell took over the tenancy and moved in on 2 April 1936. He started work on ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' by the end of April, but also spent hours working on the garden, planting a rose garden which is still extant, and revealing four years later that "outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening, especially vegetable gardening". He also tested the possibility of reopening the Stores as a village shop. ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying'' was published by Gollancz on 20 April 1936. On 4 August, Orwell gave a talk at the Adelphi Summer School held at Langham, entitled ''An Outsider Sees the Distressed Areas''; others who spoke at the school included John Strachey,

Karl Polanyi Karl Paul Polanyi (; hu, Polányi Károly ; 25 October 1886 – 23 April 1964),''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. 2003) vol 9. p. 554 was an Austro-Hungarian economic anthropologist and politician, best known ...

and

Reinhold Niebuhr Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971) was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Niebuhr was one of Ameri ...

. The result of his journeys through the north was ''

The Road to Wigan Pier ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' is a book by the English writer George Orwell, first published in 1937. The first half of this work documents his sociological investigations of the bleak living conditions among the working class in Lancashire and Yor ...

'', published by Gollancz for the Left Book Club in 1937. The first half of the book documents his social investigations of

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...

and

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...

, including an evocative description of working life in the coal mines. The second half is a long essay on his upbringing and the development of his political conscience, which includes an argument for socialism (although he goes to lengths to balance the concerns and goals of socialism with the barriers it faced from the movement's own advocates at the time, such as "priggish" and "dull" socialist intellectuals and "proletarian" socialists with little grasp of the actual ideology). Gollancz feared the second half would offend readers and added a disculpatory preface to the book while Orwell was in Spain. Orwell's research for ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' led to him being placed under surveillance by the Special Branch from 1936, for 12 years, until one year before the publication of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. Orwell married

on 9 June 1936. Shortly afterwards, the political crisis began in Spain and Orwell followed developments there closely. At the end of the year, concerned by Francisco Franco's military uprising (supported by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, Fascist Italy and local groups such as

Falange The Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FET y de las JONS; ), frequently shortened to just "FET", was the sole legal party of the Francoist regime in Spain. It was created by General Francisco ...

), Orwell decided to go to Spain to take part in the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...

on the Republican side. Under the erroneous impression that he needed papers from some left-wing organisation to cross the frontier, on John Strachey's recommendation he applied unsuccessfully to

Harry Pollitt Harry Pollitt (22 November 1890 – 27 June 1960) was a British communist who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) from 1929 to September 1939 and again from 1941 until his death in 1960. Pollitt spent ...

, leader of the

British Communist Party The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

. Pollitt was suspicious of Orwell's political reliability; he asked him whether he would undertake to join the

International Brigade The International Brigades ( es, Brigadas Internacionales) were military units set up by the Communist International to assist the Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The organization existe ...

and advised him to get a safe-conduct from the Spanish Embassy in Paris. Not wishing to commit himself until he had seen the situation ''in situ'', Orwell instead used his Independent Labour Party contacts to get a letter of introduction to John McNair in Barcelona.

Spanish Civil War

Orwell set out for Spain on about 23 December 1936, dining with

Henry Miller Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical ref ...

in Paris on the way. Miller told Orwell that going to fight in the Civil War out of some sense of obligation or guilt was "sheer stupidity" and that the Englishman's ideas "about combating Fascism, defending democracy, etc., etc., were all baloney". A few days later in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

, Orwell met John McNair of the

(ILP) Office who quoted him: "I've come to fight against Fascism", but if someone had asked him what he was fighting ''for'', "I should have answered: 'Common decency'". Orwell stepped into a complex political situation in

Catalonia Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a '' nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the nort ...

. The

Republican government Representative democracy, also known as indirect democracy, is a type of democracy where elected people represent a group of people, in contrast to direct democracy. Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of represe ...

was supported by a number of factions with conflicting aims, including the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM – Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista), the

anarcho-syndicalist Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence i ...

Confederación Nacional del Trabajo The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo ( en, National Confederation of Labor; CNT) is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionar ...

(CNT) and the

Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia The Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia ( ca, Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya, PSUC) was a Communism, communist political party active in Catalonia between 1936 and 1997. It was the Catalan branch of the Communist Party of Spain and the o ...

(a wing of the Spanish Communist Party, which was backed by Soviet arms and aid). Orwell was at first exasperated by this "kaleidoscope" of political parties and trade unions, "with their tiresome names". The ILP was linked to the POUM so Orwell joined the POUM. After a time at the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona he was sent to the relatively quiet Aragon Front under

Georges Kopp Georges Kopp (October 10, 1902 – July 15, 1951) was a Belgian educated engineer and inventor of Russian descent, who volunteered in the fight against Nazism and is best known for his friendship with George Orwell, whom he commanded in the Spani ...

. By January 1937 he was at Alcubierre above sea level, in the depth of winter. There was very little military action and Orwell was shocked by the lack of munitions, food and firewood as well as other extreme deprivations. With his Cadet Corps and police training, Orwell was quickly made a corporal. On the arrival of a British ILP Contingent about three weeks later, Orwell and the other English militiaman, Williams, were sent with them to Monte Oscuro. The newly arrived ILP contingent included Bob Smillie, Bob Edwards, Stafford Cottman and Jack Branthwaite. The unit was then sent on to

Huesca Huesca (; an, Uesca) is a city in north-eastern Spain, within the autonomous community of Aragon. It is also the capital of the Spanish province of the same name and of the comarca of Hoya de Huesca. In 2009 it had a population of 52,059, almo ...

. Meanwhile, back in England, Eileen had been handling the issues relating to the publication of ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' before setting out for Spain herself, leaving Nellie Limouzin to look after The Stores. Eileen volunteered for a post in John McNair's office and with the help of Georges Kopp paid visits to her husband, bringing him English tea, chocolate and cigars. Orwell had to spend some days in hospital with a poisoned hand and had most of his possessions stolen by the staff. He returned to the front and saw some action in a night attack on the Nationalist trenches where he chased an enemy soldier with a bayonet and bombed an enemy rifle position. In April, Orwell returned to Barcelona. Wanting to be sent to the Madrid front, which meant he "must join the International Column", he approached a Communist friend attached to the Spanish Medical Aid and explained his case. "Although he did not think much of the Communists, Orwell was still ready to treat them as friends and allies. That would soon change." This was the time of the Barcelona May Days and Orwell was caught up in the factional fighting. He spent much of the time on a roof, with a stack of novels, but encountered Jon Kimche from his Hampstead days during the stay. The subsequent campaign of lies and distortion carried out by the Communist press, in which the POUM was accused of collaborating with the fascists, had a dramatic effect on Orwell. Instead of joining the International Brigades as he had intended, he decided to return to the Aragon Front. Once the May fighting was over, he was approached by a Communist friend who asked if he still intended transferring to the International Brigades. Orwell expressed surprise that they should still want him, because according to the Communist press he was a fascist. "No one who was in Barcelona then, or for months later, will forget the horrible atmosphere produced by fear, suspicion, hatred, censored newspapers, crammed jails, enormous food queues and prowling gangs of armed men." After his return to the front, he was wounded in the throat by a sniper's bullet. At 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m), Orwell was considerably taller than the Spanish fighters and had been warned against standing against the trench parapet. Unable to speak, and with blood pouring from his mouth, Orwell was carried on a stretcher to Siétamo, loaded on an ambulance and after a bumpy journey via

Barbastro Barbastro (Latin: ''Barbastrum'' or ''Civitas Barbastrensis'', Aragonese: ''Balbastro'') is a city in the Somontano county, province of Huesca, Spain. The city (also known originally as Barbastra or Bergiduna) is at the junction of the rivers Cin ...

arrived at the hospital in Lleida. He recovered sufficiently to get up and on 27 May 1937 was sent on to

Tarragona Tarragona (, ; Phoenician: ''Tarqon''; la, Tarraco) is a port city located in northeast Spain on the Costa Daurada by the Mediterranean Sea. Founded before the fifth century BC, it is the capital of the Province of Tarragona, and part of Tarr ...

and two days later to a POUM sanatorium in the suburbs of Barcelona. The bullet had missed his main artery by the barest margin and his voice was barely audible. It had been such a clean shot that the wound immediately went through the process of cauterisation. He received

electrotherapy Electrotherapy is the use of electrical energy as a medical treatment. In medicine, the term ''electrotherapy'' can apply to a variety of treatments, including the use of electrical devices such as deep brain stimulators for neurological dise ...

treatment and was declared medically unfit for service. By the middle of June, the political situation in Barcelona had deteriorated and the POUM—painted by the pro-Soviet Communists as a

Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...

organisation—was outlawed and under attack. The Communist line was that the POUM were "objectively" Fascist, hindering the Republican cause. "A particularly nasty poster appeared, showing a head with a POUM mask being ripped off to reveal a Swastika-covered face beneath." Members, including Kopp, were arrested and others were in hiding. Orwell and his wife were under threat and had to lie low, although they broke cover to try to help Kopp. Finally with their passports in order, they escaped from Spain by train, diverting to

Banyuls-sur-Mer Banyuls-sur-Mer (; ) is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France. It was first settled by Greeks starting in 400 BCE. Geography Location Banyuls-sur-Mer is located in the canton of La Côte Vermeille and in the ar ...

for a short stay before returning to England. In the first week of July 1937 Orwell arrived back at Wallington; on 13 July 1937 a deposition was presented to the Tribunal for Espionage & High Treason in

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...

, charging the Orwells with "rabid

Trotskyism Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...

", and being agents of the

POUM The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification ( es, Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, POUM; ca, Partit Obrer d'Unificació Marxista) was a Spanish communist party formed during the Second Republic and mainly active around the Spanish Civil ...

. The trial of the leaders of the POUM and of Orwell (in his absence) took place in Barcelona in October and November 1938. Observing events from French Morocco, Orwell wrote that they were "only a by-product of the Russian Trotskyist trials and from the start every kind of lie, including flagrant absurdities, has been circulated in the Communist press." Orwell's experiences in the Spanish Civil War gave rise to ''

'' (1938). In his book, ''The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War,'' Giles Tremlett writes that according to Soviet files, Orwell and his wife Eileen were spied on in Barcelona in May 1937. "The papers are documentary evidence that not only Orwell, but also his wife Eileen, were being watched closely".

Rest and recuperation

24 Crooms Hill, Greenwich, London-11July2010

Orwell returned to England in June 1937, and stayed at the O'Shaughnessy home at Greenwich. He found his views on the Spanish Civil War out of favour.

Kingsley Martin Basil Kingsley Martin (28 July 1897 – 16 February 1969) usually known as Kingsley Martin, was a British journalist who edited the left-leaning political magazine the ''New Statesman'' from 1930 to 1960. Early life He was the son of (Dav ...

rejected two of his works and Gollancz was equally cautious. At the same time, the communist ''

Daily Worker The ''Daily Worker'' was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, attempts were ...

'' was running an attack on ''The Road to Wigan Pier'', taking out of context Orwell writing that "the working classes smell"; a letter to Gollancz from Orwell threatening libel action brought a stop to this. Orwell was also able to find a more sympathetic publisher for his views in Fredric Warburg of Secker & Warburg. Orwell returned to Wallington, which he found in disarray after his absence. He acquired goats, a cockerel (rooster) he called Henry Ford and a poodle puppy he called Marx; and settled down to animal husbandry and writing ''Homage to Catalonia''. There were thoughts of going to India to work on '' The Pioneer'', a newspaper in

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and division ...

, but by March 1938 Orwell's health had deteriorated. He was admitted to Preston Hall Sanatorium at Aylesford, Kent, a British Legion hospital for ex-servicemen to which his brother-in-law Laurence O'Shaughnessy was attached. He was thought initially to be suffering from

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...

and stayed in the sanatorium until September. A stream of visitors came to see him, including Common, Heppenstall, Plowman and Cyril Connolly. Connolly brought with him

Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry by th ...

, a cause of some embarrassment as Orwell had referred to Spender as a "pansy friend" some time earlier. ''Homage to Catalonia'' was published by Secker & Warburg and was a commercial flop. In the latter part of his stay at the clinic, Orwell was able to go for walks in the countryside and study nature. The novelist L. H. Myers secretly funded a trip to French Morocco for half a year for Orwell to avoid the English winter and recover his health. The Orwells set out in September 1938 via

Gibraltar ) , anthem = " God Save the King" , song = " Gibraltar Anthem" , image_map = Gibraltar location in Europe.svg , map_alt = Location of Gibraltar in Europe , map_caption = United Kingdom shown in pale green , mapsize = , image_map2 = Gib ...

and

Tangier Tangier ( ; ; ar, طنجة, Ṭanja) is a city in northwestern Morocco. It is on the Moroccan coast at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Spartel. The town is the capi ...

to avoid Spanish Morocco and arrived at Marrakech. They rented a villa on the road to Casablanca and during that time Orwell wrote ''

Coming Up for Air ''Coming Up for Air'' is the seventh book by English writer George Orwell, published in June 1939 by Victor Gollancz. It was written between 1938 and 1939 while Orwell spent time recuperating from illness in French Morocco, mainly in Marrakesh. ...

''. They arrived back in England on 30 March 1939 and ''Coming Up for Air'' was published in June. Orwell spent time in Wallington and Southwold working on a

Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...

essay and it was in June 1939 that Orwell's father, Richard Blair, died.

Second World War and ''Animal Farm''

At the outbreak of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, Orwell's wife Eileen started working in the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information in central London, staying during the week with her family in

Greenwich Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross. Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...

. Orwell also submitted his name to the Central Register for war work, but nothing transpired. "They won't have me in the army, at any rate at present, because of my lungs", Orwell told Geoffrey Gorer. He returned to Wallington, and in late 1939 he wrote material for his first collection of essays, '' Inside the Whale''. For the next year he was occupied writing reviews for plays, films and books for '' The Listener'', '' Time and Tide'' and ''New Adelphi''. On 29 March 1940 his long association with ''

Tribune Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on th ...

'' began with a review of a sergeant's account of

Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...

retreat from Moscow The French invasion of Russia, also known as the Russian campaign, the Second Polish War, the Army of Twenty nations, and the Patriotic War of 1812 was launched by Napoleon Bonaparte to force the Russian Empire back into the continental block ...

. At the beginning of 1940, the first edition of Connolly's '' Horizon'' appeared, and this provided a new outlet for Orwell's work as well as new literary contacts. In May the Orwells took lease of a flat in London at Dorset Chambers, Chagford Street,

Marylebone Marylebone (usually , also , ) is a district in the West End of London, in the City of Westminster. Oxford Street, Europe's busiest shopping street, forms its southern boundary. An ancient parish and latterly a metropolitan borough, it me ...

. It was the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, and the death in France of Eileen's brother Lawrence caused her considerable grief and long-term depression. Throughout this period Orwell kept a wartime diary. Orwell was declared "unfit for any kind of military service" by the Medical Board in June, but soon afterwards found an opportunity to become involved in war activities by joining the

Home Guard Home guard is a title given to various military organizations at various times, with the implication of an emergency or reserve force raised for local defense. The term "home guard" was first officially used in the American Civil War, starting w ...

. He shared

Tom Wintringham Thomas Henry Wintringham (15 May 1898 – 16 August 1949) was a British soldier, military historian, journalist, poet, Marxist, politician and author. He was a supporter of the Home Guard during the Second World War and was one of the founder ...

's socialist vision for the Home Guard as a revolutionary People's Militia. His lecture notes for instructing platoon members include advice on street fighting, field fortifications, and the use of

mortars Mortar may refer to: * Mortar (weapon), an indirect-fire infantry weapon * Mortar (masonry), a material used to fill the gaps between blocks and bind them together * Mortar and pestle, a tool pair used to crush or grind * Mortar, Bihar, a villag ...

of various kinds. Sergeant Orwell managed to recruit Fredric Warburg to his unit. During the

Battle of Britain The Battle of Britain, also known as the Air Battle for England (german: die Luftschlacht um England), was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Navy defende ...

he used to spend weekends with Warburg and his new

Zionist Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after '' Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...

friend,

Tosco Fyvel Raphael Joseph Feiwel (1907 – 22 June 1985), better known as Tosco R. Fyvel or T. R. Fyvel (), was an writer, journalist and literary editor. In 1936–1937, he was active in the Zionist movement in Palestine, then under the control of the Briti ...

, at Warburg's house at

Twyford, Berkshire Twyford is a large village and civil parish in the English royal county of Berkshire, with a population of 6,618 people. It is in the Thames Valley at on the A4 between Reading and Maidenhead, close to Henley-on-Thames and Wokingham. History ...

. At Wallington he worked on " England Your England" and in London wrote reviews for various periodicals. Visiting Eileen's family in Greenwich brought him face-to-face with the effects of

the Blitz The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term , the German word meaning 'lightning war'. The Germa ...

on East London. In mid-1940, Warburg, Fyvel and Orwell planned

Searchlight Books Searchlight Books was a series of essays published as hardback books, edited by T. R. Fyvel and George Orwell. The series was published by Secker & Warburg. The series was projected for 17 titles, of which ten were published during 1941-42, but b ...

. Eleven volumes eventually appeared, of which Orwell's '' The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius'', published on 19 February 1941, was the first. Early in 1941 he began to write for the American ''

Partisan Review ''Partisan Review'' (''PR'') was a small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in New York City. The magazine was launched in 1934 by the Communist Party USA–affiliated Joh ...

'' which linked Orwell with The New York Intellectuals who were also anti-Stalinist, and contributed to the Gollancz anthology ''The Betrayal of the Left'', written in the light of the

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that enabled those powers to partition Poland between them. The pact was signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939 by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ri ...

(although Orwell referred to it as the Russo-German Pact and the Hitler-Stalin Pact). He also applied unsuccessfully for a job at the

Air Ministry The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the Secretary of State ...

. Meanwhile, he was still writing reviews of books and plays and at this time met the novelist

Anthony Powell Anthony Dymoke Powell ( ; 21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his 12-volume work ''A Dance to the Music of Time'', published between 1951 and 1975. It is on the list of longest novels in English. Powell' ...

. He also took part in a few radio broadcasts for the Eastern Service of the BBC. In March the Orwells moved to a seventh-floor flat at Langford Court,

St John's Wood St John's Wood is a district in the City of Westminster, London, lying 2.5 miles (4 km) northwest of Charing Cross. Traditionally the northern part of the ancient parish and Metropolitan Borough of Marylebone, it extends east to west from ...

, while at Wallington Orwell was " digging for victory" by planting potatoes. In August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" when he was taken on full-time by the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

David Astor Francis David Langhorne Astor, CH (5 March 1912 – 7 December 2001) was an English newspaper publisher, editor of ''The Observer'' at the height of its circulation and influence, and member of the Astor family, "the landlords of New York". E ...

was looking for a provocative contributor for ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...

'' and invited Orwell to write for him—the first article appearing in March 1942. In early 1942 Eileen changed jobs to work at the

Ministry of Food An agriculture ministry (also called an) agriculture department, agriculture board, agriculture council, or agriculture agency, or ministry of rural development) is a ministry charged with agriculture. The ministry is often headed by a minister ...

and in mid-1942 the Orwells moved to a larger flat, a ground floor and basement, 10a Mortimer Crescent in

Maida Vale Maida Vale ( ) is an affluent residential district consisting of the northern part of Paddington in West London, west of St John's Wood and south of Kilburn. It is also the name of its main road, on the continuous Edgware Road. Maida Vale is ...

/ Kilburn—"the kind of lower-middle-class ambience that Orwell thought was London at its best." Around the same time Orwell's mother and sister Avril, who had found work in a

sheet-metal Sheet metal is metal formed into thin, flat pieces, usually by an industrial process. Sheet metal is one of the fundamental forms used in metalworking, and it can be cut and bent into a variety of shapes. Thicknesses can vary significantly; ex ...

factory behind King's Cross Station, moved into a flat close to George and Eileen. George-orwell-BBC

At the BBC, Orwell introduced ''Voice'', a literary programme for his Indian broadcasts, and by now was leading an active social life with literary friends, particularly on the political left. Late in 1942, he started writing regularly for the left-wing weekly ''

'' directed by Labour MPs Aneurin Bevan and

George Strauss George Russell Strauss, Baron Strauss PC (18 July 1901 – 5 June 1993) was a long-serving British Labour Party politician, who was a Member of Parliament (MP) for 46 years and was Father of the House of Commons from 1974 to 1979. Early life ...

. In March 1943, Orwell's mother died, and around the same time he told Moore he was starting work on a new book, which turned out to be ''

Animal Farm ''Animal Farm'' is a beast fable, in the form of satirical allegorical novella, by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. It tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to c ...

''. In September 1943, Orwell resigned from the BBC post that he had occupied for two years. His resignation followed a report confirming his fears that few Indians listened to the broadcasts, but he was also keen to concentrate on writing ''Animal Farm''. Just six days before his last day of service, on 24 November 1943, his adaptation of the fairy tale, Hans Christian Andersen's ''

The Emperor's New Clothes "The Emperor's New Clothes" ( da, Kejserens nye klæder ) is a literary Folklore, folktale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, about a vain emperor who gets exposed before his subjects. The tale has been translated into over 100 l ...

'' was broadcast. It was a genre in which he was greatly interested and which appeared on ''Animal Farm''s title page. At this time he also resigned from the Home Guard on medical grounds. In November 1943, Orwell was appointed literary editor at ''Tribune'', where his assistant was his old friend Jon Kimche. Orwell was on staff until early 1945, writing over 80 book reviews and on 3 December 1943 started his regular personal column, " As I Please", usually addressing three or four subjects in each. He was still writing reviews for other magazines, including ''Partisan Review'', ''Horizon'', and the New York ''

Nation A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective Identity (social science), identity of a group of people unde ...

'' and becoming a respected pundit among left-wing circles but also a close friend of people on the right such as Powell, Astor and

Malcolm Muggeridge Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990) was an English journalist and satirist. His father, H. T. Muggeridge, was a socialist politician and one of the early Labour Party Members of Parliament (for Romford, in Essex). In ...

. By April 1944 ''Animal Farm'' was ready for publication. Gollancz refused to publish it, considering it an attack on the Soviet regime which was a crucial ally in the war. A similar fate was met from other publishers (including T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber) until Jonathan Cape agreed to take it. In May the Orwells had the opportunity to adopt a child, thanks to the contacts of Eileen's sister Gwen O'Shaughnessy, then a doctor in

Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...

. In June a

V-1 flying bomb The V-1 flying bomb (german: Vergeltungswaffe 1 "Vengeance Weapon 1") was an early cruise missile. Its official Ministry of Aviation (Nazi Germany), Reich Aviation Ministry () designation was Fi 103. It was also known to the Allies as the buz ...

struck Mortimer Crescent and the Orwells had to find somewhere else to live. Orwell had to scrabble around in the rubble for his collection of books, which he had finally managed to transfer from Wallington, carting them away in a wheelbarrow. Another blow was Cape's reversal of his plan to publish ''Animal Farm''. The decision followed his personal visit to Peter Smollett, an official at the Ministry of Information. Smollett was later identified as a Soviet agent. The Orwells spent some time in the North East, near Carlton, County Durham, dealing with matters in the adoption of a boy whom they named Richard Horatio Blair. By September 1944 they had set up home in Islington, at 27b

Canonbury Square Canonbury Square is a garden square in Canonbury, North London. It is bounded by terraces of mostly Georgian houses, many of which are listed buildings. The central public gardens contain attractive flower beds and several London plane trees ...

. Baby Richard joined them there, and Eileen gave up her work at the Ministry of Food to look after her family.

Secker & Warburg Harvill Secker is a British publishing company formed in 2005 from the merger of Secker & Warburg and the Harvill Press. History Secker & Warburg Secker & Warburg was formed in 1935 from a takeover of Martin Secker, which was in receivership, ...

had agreed to publish ''Animal Farm'', planned for the following March, although it did not appear in print until August 1945. By February 1945 David Astor had invited Orwell to become a war correspondent for ''The Observer''. Orwell had been looking for the opportunity throughout the war, but his failed medical reports prevented him from being allowed anywhere near action. He went first to liberated Paris and then to Germany and Austria, to such cities as

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

and Stuttgart. He was never in the front line and was never under fire, but he followed the troops closely, "sometimes entering a captured town within a day of its fall while dead bodies lay in the streets." Some of his reports were published in the ''

Manchester Evening News The ''Manchester Evening News'' (''MEN'') is a regional daily newspaper covering Greater Manchester in North West England, founded in 1868. It is published Monday–Saturday; a Sunday edition, the ''MEN on Sunday'', was launched in February 20 ...

''. It was while he was there that Eileen went into hospital for a hysterectomy and died under anaesthetic on 29 March 1945. She had not given Orwell much notice about this operation because of worries about the cost and because she expected to make a speedy recovery. Orwell returned home for a while and then went back to Europe. He returned finally to London to cover the

1945 general election The following elections occurred in the year 1945. Africa * 1945 South-West African legislative election Asia * 1945 Indian general election Australia * 1945 Fremantle by-election Europe * 1945 Albanian parliamentary election * 1945 Bulgarian ...

at the beginning of July. '' Animal Farm: A Fairy Story'' was published in Britain on 17 August 1945, and a year later in the US, on 26 August 1946.

Jura and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''

''Animal Farm'' had particular resonance in the post-war climate and its worldwide success made Orwell a sought-after figure. For the next four years, Orwell mixed journalistic work—mainly for ''Tribune'', ''The Observer'' and the ''

'', though he also contributed to many small-circulation political and literary magazines—with writing his best-known work, ''

Nineteen Eighty-Four ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also stylised as ''1984'') is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and fina ...

'', which was published in 1949. He was a leading figure in the so-called Shanghai Club (named after a restaurant in Soho) of left-leaning and émigré journalists, among them E. H. Carr,

Sebastian Haffner Raimund Pretzel (27 December 1907 – 2 January 1999), better known by his pseudonym Sebastian Haffner, was a German journalist and historian. As an émigré in Britain during World War II, Haffner argued that accommodation was impossible not on ...

Isaac Deutscher Isaac; grc, Ἰσαάκ, Isaák; ar, إسحٰق/إسحاق, Isḥāq; am, ይስሐቅ is one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites and an important figure in the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He was the ...

Barbara Ward Barbara Mary Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth, (23 May 1914 – 31 May 1981) was a British economist and writer interested in the problems of developing countries. She urged Western governments to share their prosperity with the rest of th ...

and Jon Kimche. Barnhill (Cnoc an t-Sabhail) - geograph

In the year following Eileen's death he published around 130 articles and a selection of his '' Critical Essays'', while remaining active in various political lobbying campaigns. He employed a housekeeper, Susan Watson, to look after his adopted son at the Islington flat, which visitors now described as "bleak". In September he spent a fortnight on the island of Jura in the Inner Hebrides and saw it as a place to escape from the hassle of London literary life. David Astor was instrumental in arranging a place for Orwell on Jura. Astor's family owned Scottish estates in the area and a fellow Old Etonian, Robin Fletcher, had a property on the island. In late 1945 and early 1946 Orwell made several hopeless and unwelcome marriage proposals to younger women, including Celia Kirwan (who later became

Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...

's sister-in-law); Ann Popham who happened to live in the same block of flats; and

Sonia Brownell Sonia Mary Brownell (25 August 1918 – 11 December 1980), better known as Sonia Orwell, was the second wife of writer George Orwell. Sonia is believed to be the model for Julia, the heroine of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. Sonia collaborated with ...

, one of Connolly's coterie at the ''Horizon'' office. Orwell suffered a tubercular haemorrhage in February 1946 but disguised his illness. In 1945 or early 1946, while still living at Canonbury Square, Orwell wrote an article on "British Cookery", complete with recipes, commissioned by the

British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lan ...

. Given the post-war shortages, both parties agreed not to publish it. His sister Marjorie died of kidney disease in May, and soon afterwards, on 22 May 1946, Orwell set off to live on the Isle of Jura at a house known as Barnhill. This was an abandoned farmhouse with outbuildings near the northern end of the island, at the end of a five-mile (8 km) heavily rutted track from Ardlussa, where the owners lived. Conditions at the farmhouse were primitive but the natural history and the challenge of improving the place appealed to Orwell. His sister Avril accompanied him there and young novelist

Paul Potts Paul Potts (born 13 October 1970) is an English tenor. In 2007, he won the first series of ITV's ''Britain's Got Talent'' with his performance of " Nessun dorma", an aria from Puccini's opera ''Turandot''. As a singer of operatic pop music ...

made up the party. In July Susan Watson arrived with Orwell's son Richard. Tensions developed and Potts departed after one of his manuscripts was used to light the fire. Orwell meanwhile set to work on ''

''. Later Susan Watson's boyfriend David Holbrook arrived. A fan of Orwell since school days, he found the reality very different, with Orwell hostile and disagreeable probably because of Holbrook's membership of the Communist Party. Watson could no longer stand being with Avril and she and her boyfriend left. Orwell returned to London in late 1946 and picked up his literary journalism again. Now a well-known writer, he was swamped with work. Apart from a visit to Jura in the new year he stayed in London for one of the coldest British winters on record and with such a national shortage of fuel that he burnt his furniture and his child's toys. The heavy smog in the days before the Clean Air Act 1956 did little to help his health, about which he was reticent, keeping clear of medical attention. Meanwhile, he had to cope with rival claims of publishers Gollancz and Warburg for publishing rights. About this time he co-edited a collection titled ''British Pamphleteers'' with Reginald Reynolds. As a result of the success of ''Animal Farm'', Orwell was expecting a large bill from the

Inland Revenue The Inland Revenue was, until April 2005, a department of the British Government responsible for the collection of direct taxation, including income tax, national insurance contributions, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, corporation t ...

and he contacted a firm of accountants whose senior partner was Jack Harrison. The firm advised Orwell to establish a company to own his copyright and to receive his royalties and set up a "service agreement" so that he could draw a salary. Such a company, "George Orwell Productions Ltd" (GOP Ltd) was set up on 12 September 1947, although the service agreement was not then put into effect. Jack Harrison left the details at this stage to junior colleagues. Orwell left London for Jura on 10 April 1947. In July he ended the lease on the Wallington cottage. Back on Jura he worked on ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' and made good progress. During that time his sister's family visited, and Orwell led a disastrous boating expedition, on 19 August, which nearly led to loss of life whilst trying to cross the notorious

Gulf of Corryvreckan The Gulf of Corryvreckan (from the Gaelic ''Coire Bhreacain'', meaning 'cauldron of the speckled seas' or 'cauldron of the plaid'), also called the Strait of Corryvreckan, is a narrow strait between the islands of Jura and Scarba, in Argyll and ...

and gave him a soaking which was not good for his health. In December a chest specialist was summoned from Glasgow who pronounced Orwell seriously ill, and a week before Christmas 1947 he was in Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride, then a small village in the countryside, on the outskirts of Glasgow.

Tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...

was diagnosed and the request for permission to import

streptomycin Streptomycin is an antibiotic medication used to treat a number of bacterial infections, including tuberculosis, ''Mycobacterium avium'' complex, endocarditis, brucellosis, ''Burkholderia'' infection, plague, tularemia, and rat bite fever. F ...

to treat Orwell went as far as Aneurin Bevan, then Minister of Health.

helped with supply and payment and Orwell began his course of streptomycin on 19 or 20 February 1948. By the end of July 1948 Orwell was able to return to Jura and by December he had finished the manuscript of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. In January 1949, in a very weak condition, he set off for a sanatorium at Cranham, Gloucestershire, escorted by Richard Rees. Unluckily for Orwell, streptomycin could not be continued, as he developed toxic epidermal necrolysis, a rare side effect of streptomycin. Animal Farm strip cartoon

The sanatorium at Cranham consisted of a series of small wooden chalets or huts in a remote part of the Cotswolds near Stroud. Visitors were shocked by Orwell's appearance and concerned by the shortcomings and ineffectiveness of the treatment. Friends were worried about his finances, but by now he was comparatively well off. He was writing to many of his friends, including Jacintha Buddicom, who had "rediscovered" him, and in March 1949, was visited by Celia Kirwan. Kirwan had just started working for a Foreign Office unit, the

Information Research Department The Information Research Department (IRD) was a secret Cold War propaganda department of the British Foreign Office, created to publish anti-communist propaganda, including black propaganda, provide support and information to anti-communist pol ...

(IRD), set up by the Labour government to publish anti-communist propaganda, and Orwell gave her a list of people he considered to be unsuitable as IRD authors because of their pro-communist leanings. Orwell's list, not published until 2003, consisted mainly of writers but also included actors and Labour MPs. To further promote ''Animal Farm'', the IRD commissioned cartoon strips, drawn by

Norman Pett Norman Pett (12 April 1891, Kings Norton, Worcestershire – 16 February 1960, Sussex) was an English artist who, in 1932, created the famous cartoon character ''Jane'' for the ''Daily Mirror''. Early life Pett was born on 12 April 1891 in Kin ...

, to be placed in newspapers across the globe. Orwell received more streptomycin treatment and improved slightly. This repeat dose of streptomycin, especially after the side effect had been noticed, has been called "ill-advised". He then received penicillin, with doctors knowing fully well it was ineffective against tuberculosis. It is presumed it was given to treat his bronchiectasis. In June 1949 ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' was published, to critical acclaim.

Final months and death

Orwell's health continued to decline after the diagnosis of

in December 1947. In mid-1949, he courted

, and they announced their engagement in September, shortly before he was removed to

University College Hospital University College Hospital (UCH) is a teaching hospital in the Fitzrovia area of the London Borough of Camden, England. The hospital, which was founded as the North London Hospital in 1834, is closely associated with University College Lond ...

in London. Sonia took charge of Orwell's affairs and attended him diligently in the hospital. Sonia was a beauty, and her act of marrying a sick wealthy man, when his death was almost certain, has left many to doubt her intentions. In September 1949, Orwell invited his accountant Harrison to visit him in hospital, and Harrison claimed that Orwell then asked him to become director of GOP Ltd and to manage the company, but there was no independent witness. Orwell's wedding took place in the hospital room on 13 October 1949, with David Astor as best man. Orwell was in decline and was visited by an assortment of visitors including Muggeridge, Connolly,

Lucian Freud Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewis ...

, Stephen Spender,

Evelyn Waugh Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires '' Decl ...

, Paul Potts, Anthony Powell, and his Eton tutor Anthony Gow. Plans to go to the Swiss Alps were mooted. Further meetings were held with his accountant, at which Harrison and Mr and Mrs Blair were confirmed as directors of the company, and at which Harrison claimed that the "service agreement" was executed, giving copyright to the company. Orwell's health was in decline again by Christmas. On the evening of 20 January 1950, Potts visited Orwell and slipped away on finding him asleep. Jack Harrison visited later and claimed that Orwell gave him 25% of the company. Early on the morning of 21 January, an artery burst in Orwell's lungs, killing him at age 46. Grave of Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell), All Saints, Sutton Courtenay - geograph

Grave of Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell), All Saints, Sutton Courtenay - geograph

Orwell had requested to be buried in accordance with the Anglican rite in the graveyard of the closest church to wherever he happened to die. The graveyards in central London had no space, and so in an effort to ensure his last wishes could be fulfilled, his widow appealed to his friends to see whether any of them knew of a church with space in its graveyard. David Astor lived in Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, and arranged for Orwell to be interred in the churchyard of All Saints' there. Orwell's gravestone bears the epitaph: "Here lies Eric Arthur Blair, born June 25th 1903, died January 21st 1950"; no mention is made on the gravestone of his more famous pen name. Orwell's adopted son, Richard Horatio Blair, was brought up by Orwell's sister Avril. He is patron of

The Orwell Society The Orwell Society is a literary society and a UK registered Charitable organization, charity. It was founded in 2011 with the aim of promoting the understanding and appreciation of the life and work of George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur ...

. In 1979, Sonia Brownell brought a High Court action against Harrison when he declared an intention to subdivide his 25 percent share of the company between his three children. For Sonia, the consequence of this manoeuvre would have made getting overall control of the company three times more difficult. She was considered to have a strong case, but was becoming increasingly ill and eventually was persuaded to settle out of court on 2 November 1980. She died on 11 December 1980, aged 62.

Literary career and legacy

During most of his career, Orwell was best known for his journalism, in essays, reviews, columns in newspapers and magazines and in his books of reportage: ''

'' (describing a period of poverty in these cities), ''

'' (describing the living conditions of the poor in northern England, and

class division Class or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differently ...

generally) and ''

''. According to

Irving Howe Irving Howe (; June 11, 1920 – May 5, 1993) was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America. Early years Howe was born as Irving Horenstein in The Bronx, New York. He was the son of ...

, Orwell was "the best English essayist since Hazlitt, perhaps since

Dr Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford D ...

".(reprinted in ''

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...

''). Howe considered Orwell "the finest journalist of his day and the foremost architect of the English essay since Hazlitt". Modern readers are more often introduced to Orwell as a novelist, particularly through his enormously successful titles ''

'' and ''

''. The former is often thought to reflect degeneration in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism; the latter, life under totalitarian rule. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' is often compared to ''

Brave New World ''Brave New World'' is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hiera ...

'' by

; both are powerful dystopian novels warning of a future world where the state machine exerts complete control over social life. In 1984, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' and

Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury (; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of modes, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery fictio ...

's ''

Fahrenheit 451 ''Fahrenheit 451'' is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. Often regarded as one of his best works, ''Fahrenheit 451'' presents an American society where books have been personified and outlawed and "firemen" burn any that ar ...

'' were honoured with the

Prometheus Award The Prometheus Award is an award for libertarian science fiction novels given annually by the Libertarian Futurist Society. American author and activist L. Neil Smith established the award in 1979, but it was not awarded regularly until the newl ...

for their contributions to dystopian literature. In 2011 he received it again for ''Animal Farm''. In 2003, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' was listed at number 8 and ''Animal Farm'' at number 46 on the BBC's

The Big Read The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three-quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel of all time. The year-long survey wa ...

poll. In 2021, readers of the ''New York Times Book Review'' rated ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' third in a list of "The best books of the past 125 years." ''

'', his last novel before World War II, is the most "English" of his novels; alarms of war mingle with images of idyllic

Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

-side

Edwardian The Edwardian era or Edwardian period of British history spanned the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910 and is sometimes extended to the start of the First World War. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victori ...

childhood of protagonist George Bowling. The novel is pessimistic; industrialism and

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...

have killed the best of Old England, and there were great, new external threats. In homely terms, its protagonist George Bowling posits the totalitarian hypotheses of

Franz Borkenau Franz Borkenau (December 15, 1900 – May 22, 1957) was an Austrian writer. Borkenau was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of a civil servant. As a university student in Leipzig, his main interests were Marxism and psychoanalysis. Borkenau is kno ...

, Orwell,

Ignazio Silone Secondino Tranquilli (1 May 1900 – 22 August 1978), known by the pseudonym Ignazio Silone (, ), was an Italian political leader, novelist, and short-story writer, world-famous during World War II for his powerful anti-fascist novels. He was no ...

and Koestler: "Old Hitler's something different. So's Joe Stalin. They aren't like these chaps in the old days who crucified people and chopped their heads off and so forth, just for the fun of it ... They're something quite new—something that's never been heard of before".

Literary influences

In an autobiographical piece that Orwell sent to the editors of ''Twentieth Century Authors'' in 1940, he wrote: "The writers I care about most and never grow tired of are:

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

Swift Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIFT, ...

, Fielding,

, Charles Reade,

Flaubert Gustave Flaubert ( , , ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flauber ...

and, among modern writers,

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most is

W. Somerset Maugham William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...

, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills." Elsewhere, Orwell strongly praised the works of

, especially his book ''

The Road ''The Road'' is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that ha ...

''. Orwell's investigation of poverty in ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' strongly resembles that of Jack London's ''

'', in which the American journalist disguises himself as an out-of-work sailor to investigate the lives of the poor in London. In his essay "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels" (1946) Orwell wrote: "If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put '' Gulliver's Travels'' among them." On

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

and became a close friend during the three years that Koestler and his wife Mamain spent at the cottage of Bwlch Ocyn, a secluded farmhouse that belonged to

Clough Williams-Ellis Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis, CBE, MC (28 May 1883 – 9 April 1978) was a Welsh architect known chiefly as the creator of the Italianate village of Portmeirion in North Wales. He became a major figure in the development of Welsh architec ...

, in the

Vale of Ffestiniog The Vale of Ffestiniog is a valley in the Snowdonia National Park in Gwynedd, North Wales. It stretches from Ffestiniog in the east and runs in a westerly direction towards Tremadog Bay, terminating near Porthmadog. The Afon Dwyryd runs throug ...

. Orwell reviewed Koestler's ''

Darkness at Noon ''Darkness at Noon'' (german: link=no, Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by Hungarian-born novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, and tried ...

'' for the ''

'' in 1941, saying:

Brilliant as this book is as a novel, and a piece of brilliant literature, it is probably most valuable as an interpretation of the Moscow "confessions" by someone with an inner knowledge of totalitarian methods. What was frightening about these trials was not the fact that they happened—for obviously such things are necessary in a totalitarian society—but the eagerness of Western intellectuals to justify them.

Other writers Orwell admired included:

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champ ...

George Gissing George Robert Gissing (; 22 November 1857 – 28 December 1903) was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best-known works have reappeared in modern editions. They include '' The Nether World'' (1889), '' New Gr ...

Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquir ...

Herman Melville Herman Melville ( born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are ''Moby-Dick'' (1851); ''Typee'' (1846), a rom ...

Tobias Smollett Tobias George Smollett (baptised 19 March 1721 – 17 September 1771) was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for picaresque novels such as '' The Adventures of Roderick Random'' (1748), '' The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle'' (1751 ...

, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, and

Yevgeny Zamyatin Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin ( rus, Евге́ний Ива́нович Замя́тин, p=jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ zɐˈmʲætʲɪn; – 10 March 1937), sometimes anglicized as Eugene Zamyatin, was a Russian author of science fictio ...

. He was both an admirer and a critic of

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ...

, praising Kipling as a gifted writer and a "good bad poet" whose work is "spurious" and "morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting," but undeniably seductive and able to speak to certain aspects of reality more effectively than more enlightened authors. He had a similarly ambivalent attitude to G. K. Chesterton, whom he regarded as a writer of considerable talent who had chosen to devote himself to "Roman Catholic propaganda", and to

, who was, he wrote, "ab u as good a novelist as one can be (i.e. as novelists go today) while holding untenable opinions".

Orwell as literary critic

Throughout his life Orwell continually supported himself as a book reviewer. His reviews are well known and have had an influence on literary criticism. He wrote in the conclusion to his 1940 essay on

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...

George Woodcock George Woodcock (; May 8, 1912 – January 28, 1995) was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, a philosopher, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel wri ...

suggested that the last two sentences also describe Orwell. Orwell wrote a critique of

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...

's play '' Arms and the Man''. He considered this Shaw's best play and the most likely to remain socially relevant, because of its theme that war is not, generally speaking, a glorious romantic adventure. His 1945 essay ''In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse'' contains an amusing assessment of Wodehouse's writing and also argues that his broadcasts from Germany (during the war) did not really make him a traitor. He accused The Ministry of Information of exaggerating Wodehouse's actions for propaganda purposes.

Food writing

In 1946, the

commissioned Orwell to write an essay on British food as part of a drive to promote British relations abroad. In the essay titled ''British Cookery,'' Orwell described the British diet as "a simple, rather heavy, perhaps slightly barbarous diet" and where "hot drinks are acceptable at most hours of the day". He discusses the ritual of breakfast in the UK, "this is not a snack but a serious meal. The hour at which people have their breakfast is of course governed by the time at which they go to work." He wrote that high tea in the United Kingdom consisted of a variety of savoury and sweet dishes, but "no tea would be considered a good one if it did not include at least one kind of cake”, before adding ”as well as cakes, biscuits are much eaten at tea-time”. Orwell included a recipe for

marmalade Marmalade is a fruit preserve made from the juice and peel of citrus fruits boiled with sugar and water. The well-known version is made from bitter orange. It is also made from lemons, limes, grapefruits, mandarins, sweet oranges, bergamot ...

, a popular British spread on bread. However, the British Council declined to publish the essay on the grounds that it was too problematic to write about food at the time of strict rationing in the UK. In 2019, the essay was discovered in the British Council's archives along with the rejection letter. The British Council issued an official apology to Orwell over the rejection of the commissioned essay.

Reception and evaluations of Orwell's works

The Playhouse 1984 London Cinema Marquee

Arthur Koestler said that Orwell's "uncompromising intellectual honesty made him appear almost inhuman at times".

Ben Wattenberg Benjamin Joseph Wattenberg (born Joseph Ben Zion Wattenberg;Roberts, Sam New York ''Times'', June 29, 2015. Retrieved 2015-06-29. August 26, 1933 – June 28, 2015) was an American author, neoconservative political commentator and demographer, ...

stated: "Orwell's writing pierced intellectual hypocrisy wherever he found it". According to historian Piers Brendon, "Orwell was the saint of common decency who would in earlier days, said his BBC boss Rushbrook Williams, 'have been either canonised—or burnt at the stake'".

Raymond Williams Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contribu ...

in '' Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review'' describes Orwell as a "successful impersonation of a plain man who bumps into experience in an unmediated way and tells the truth about it". Christopher Norris declared that Orwell's "homespun empiricist outlook—his assumption that the truth was just there to be told in a straightforward common-sense way—now seems not merely naïve but culpably self-deluding". The American scholar Scott Lucas has described Orwell as an enemy of the Left. John Newsinger has argued that Lucas could only do this by portraying "all of Orwell's attacks on Stalinism ��as if they were attacks on socialism, despite Orwell's continued insistence that they were not". Orwell's work has taken a prominent place in the school literature curriculum in England, with ''Animal Farm'' a regular examination topic at the end of secondary education ( GCSE), and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' a topic for subsequent examinations below university level (

A Level The A-Level (Advanced Level) is a subject-based qualification conferred as part of the General Certificate of Education, as well as a school leaving qualification offered by the educational bodies in the United Kingdom and the educational au ...

s). A 2016 UK poll saw ''Animal Farm'' ranked the nation's favourite book from school. Historian John Rodden stated: "

John Podhoretz John Mordecai Podhoretz (; born April 18, 1961) is an American writer. He is the editor of ''Commentary'' magazine, a columnist for the ''New York Post'', the author of several books on politics, and a former speechwriter for Presidents Ronald ...

did claim that if Orwell were alive today, he'd be standing with the

neo-conservatives Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and coun ...

and against the Left. And the question arises, to what extent can you even begin to predict the political positions of somebody who's been dead three decades and more by that time?" In ''Orwell's Victory'',

Christopher Hitchens Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...

argues: "In answer to the accusation of inconsistency Orwell as a writer was forever taking his own temperature. In other words, here was someone who never stopped testing and adjusting his intelligence". John Rodden points out the "undeniable conservative features in the Orwell physiognomy" and remarks on how "to some extent Orwell facilitated the kinds of uses and abuses by the Right that his name has been put to. In other ways there has been the politics of selective quotation." Rodden refers to the essay "

Why I Write "Why I Write" (1946) is an essay by George Orwell detailing his personal journey to becoming a writer. It was first published in the Summer 1946 edition of ''Gangrel''. The editors of this magazine, J.B.Pick and Charles Neil, had asked a selection ...

", in which Orwell refers to the Spanish Civil War as being his "watershed political experience", saying: "The Spanish War and other events in 1936–37, turned the scale. Thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly ''against'' totalitarianism and ''for'' democratic socialism as I understand it." (emphasis in original) Rodden goes on to explain how, during the McCarthy era, the introduction to the Signet edition of ''Animal Farm'', which sold more than 20 million copies, makes use of selective quotation:

" 'Introduction'' If the book itself, ''Animal Farm'', had left any doubt of the matter, Orwell dispelled it in his essay ''Why I Write'': 'Every line of serious work that I've written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against Totalitarianism ....'
'Rodden'' dot, dot, dot, dot, the politics of ellipsis. 'For Democratic Socialism' is vaporized, just like Winston Smith did it at the Ministry of Truth, and that's very much what happened at the beginning of the McCarthy era and just continued, Orwell being selectively quoted."

Fyvel wrote about Orwell: "His crucial experience ..was his struggle to turn himself into a writer, one which led through long periods of poverty, failure and humiliation, and about which he has written almost nothing directly. The sweat and agony was less in the slum-life than in the effort to turn the experience into literature."

Influence on language and writing

In his essay "

Politics and the English Language "Politics and the English Language" (1946) is an essay by George Orwell that criticised the "ugly and inaccurate" written English of his time and examined the connection between political orthodoxies and the debasement of language. The essay ...

" (1946), Orwell wrote about the importance of precise and clear language, arguing that vague writing can be used as a powerful tool of political manipulation because it shapes the way we think. In that essay, Orwell provides six rules for writers:

# Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. # Never use a long word where a short one will do. # If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. # Never use the passive where you can use the active. # Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. # Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Orwell worked as a journalist at ''

'' for seven years, and its editor

gave a copy of this celebrated essay to every new recruit. In 2003, literary editor at the newspaper

Robert McCrum John Robert McCrum (born 7 July 1953) is an English writer and editor, holding senior editorial positions at Faber and Faber over seventeen years, followed by a long association with ''The Observer''. Early life The son of Michael William McC ...

wrote, "Even now, it is quoted in our style book". Journalist

Jonathan Heawood Jonathan Heawood is an English journalist and literary editor. He is Executive Director of thPublic Interest News Foundation the first journalism charity in the UK to be awarded charitable status. Heawood is the founder and former CEO of IMP ...

noted: "Orwell's criticism of slovenly language is still taken very seriously." Andrew N. Rubin argues that "Orwell claimed that we should be attentive to how the use of language has limited our capacity for critical thought just as we should be equally concerned with the ways in which dominant modes of thinking have reshaped the very language that we use." The adjective "

Orwellian "Orwellian" is an adjective describing a situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. It denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control by pro ...

" connotes an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth and manipulation of the past. In ''

'', Orwell described a totalitarian government that controlled thought by controlling language, making certain ideas literally unthinkable. Several words and phrases from ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' have entered popular language. "

Newspeak Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of the 1949 dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements ...

" is a simplified and obfuscatory language designed to make independent thought impossible. "

Doublethink Doublethink is a process of indoctrination in which subjects are expected to simultaneously accept two conflicting beliefs as truth, often at odds with their own memory or sense of reality. Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy. ...

" means holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. The "

Thought Police In the dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949), by George Orwell, the Thought Police (''Thinkpol'') are the secret police of the superstate of Oceania, who discover and punish ''thoughtcrime'', personal and political thoughts unapproved ...

" are those who suppress all dissenting opinion. "

Prolefeed Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of the 1949 dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirement ...

" is homogenised, manufactured superficial literature, film and music used to control and indoctrinate the populace through docility. " Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four), Big Brother" is a supreme dictator who watches everyone. Other

neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

s from the novel include, "

Two Minutes Hate In the 1949 dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' the Two Minutes Hate is the daily, public period during which members of the Outer Party of Oceania (1984), Oceania must watch a film depicting the enemies of the state, specifically Emmanuel Go ...

", "

Room 101 The Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Plenty are the four ministries of the government of Oceania in the 1949 dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', by George Orwell. The use of contradictory ...

", "

memory hole A memory hole is any mechanism for the deliberate alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to giv ...

", "

unperson Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of the 1949 dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements ...

", and "

thoughtcrime Thoughtcrime is a word coined by George Orwell in his 1949 dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. It describes a person's politically unorthodox thoughts, such as beliefs and doubts that contradict the tenets of Ingsoc (English Socialis ...

", as well as providing direct inspiration for the neologism "

groupthink Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness ...

". Orwell may have been the first to use the term " cold war" to refer to the state of tension between powers in the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc that followed World War II in his essay, "You and the Atom Bomb", published in ''Tribune'' on 19 October 1945. He wrote:

"We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity.
James Burnham James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy; his first book was ''An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis'' (1931). Burn ...
's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—this is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a State which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of 'cold war' with its neighbours."

Modern culture

In 2014, a play written by playwright Joe Sutton titled ''Orwell in America'' was first performed by the Northern Stage theatre company in White River Junction, Vermont. It is a fictitious account of Orwell doing a book tour in the United States (something he never did in his lifetime). It moved to off-Broadway in 2016. Orwell's birthplace, a bungalow in

Motihari Motihari is the headquarters of East Champaran district in the Indian state of Bihar. It is located District entry point and New City 40.09 kilometres Northeast Mehsi. north of the state capital Patna. Geography Motihari is located on 26� ...

, Bihar, India, was opened as a museum in May 2015.

Statue

A statue of George Orwell, sculpted by the British sculptor Martin Jennings, was unveiled on 7 November 2017 outside Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC. The wall behind the statue is inscribed with the following phrase: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear". These are words from his proposed preface to ''Animal Farm'' and a rallying cry for the idea of free speech in an open society.

Personal life

Childhood

Jacintha Buddicom's account, ''Eric & Us'', provides an insight into Blair's childhood.Jacintha Buddicom ''Eric & Us'' Frewin 1974. She quoted his sister Avril that "he was essentially an aloof, undemonstrative person" and said herself of his friendship with the Buddicoms: "I do not think he needed any other friends beyond the schoolfriend he occasionally and appreciatively referred to as 'CC'". She could not recall him having schoolfriends to stay and exchange visits as her brother Prosper often did in holidays.

Cyril Connolly Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine '' Horizon'' (1940–49) and wrote '' Enemies of Promise'' (1938), which comb ...

provides an account of Blair as a child in '' Enemies of Promise''. Years later, Blair mordantly recalled his prep school in the essay " Such, Such Were the Joys", claiming among other things that he "was made to study like a dog" to earn a scholarship, which he alleged was solely to enhance the school's prestige with parents. Jacintha Buddicom repudiated Orwell's schoolboy misery described in the essay, stating that "he was a specially happy child". She noted that he did not like his name because it reminded him of a book he greatly disliked—'' Eric, or, Little by Little'', a Victorian boys' school story. Eton College front 4

Connolly remarked of him as a schoolboy, "The remarkable thing about Orwell was that alone among the boys he was an intellectual and not a parrot for he thought for himself". At Eton,

John Vaughan Wilkes John Comyn Vaughan Wilkes (30 March 1902 – 24 January 1986) was an English educationalist, who was Warden of Radley College and an Anglican priest. Wilkes was born in Eastbourne, the eldest son of Lewis Chitty Vaughan Wilkes and his wife Ci ...

, his former headmaster's son at St Cyprians, recalled that "he was extremely argumentative—about anything—and criticising the masters and criticising the other boys ..We enjoyed arguing with him. He would generally win the arguments—or think he had anyhow." Roger Mynors concurs: "Endless arguments about all sorts of things, in which he was one of the great leaders. He was one of those boys who thought for himself."Roger Mynors in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books 1984. Blair liked to carry out practical jokes. Buddicom recalls him swinging from the luggage rack in a railway carriage like an orangutan to frighten a woman passenger out of the compartment. At Eton, he played tricks on John Crace, his

housemaster {{refimprove, date=September 2018 In British education, a housemaster is a schoolmaster in charge of a boarding house, normally at a boarding school and especially at a public school. The housemaster is responsible for the supervision and care ...

, among which was to enter a spoof advertisement in a college magazine implying pederasty. Gow, his tutor, said he "made himself as big a nuisance as he could" and "was a very unattractive boy". Later Blair was expelled from the

at Southwold for sending a dead rat as a birthday present to the town surveyor.Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick ''Orwell Remembered'' 1984 In one of his ''As I Please'' essays he refers to a protracted joke when he answered an advertisement for a woman who claimed a cure for obesity. Blair had an interest in natural history which stemmed from his childhood. In letters from school he wrote about caterpillars and butterflies, and Buddicom recalls his keen interest in ornithology. He also enjoyed fishing and shooting rabbits, and conducting experiments as in cooking a hedgehog or shooting down a jackdaw from the Eton roof to dissect it. His zeal for scientific experiments extended to explosives—again Buddicom recalls a cook giving notice because of the noise. Later in Southwold, his sister Avril recalled him blowing up the garden. When teaching he enthused his students with his nature-rambles both at Southwold and at Hayes. His adult diaries are permeated with his observations on nature.

Relationships and marriage

Buddicom and Blair lost touch shortly after he went to Burma and she became unsympathetic towards him. She wrote that it was because of the letters he wrote complaining about his life, but an addendum to '' Eric & Us'' by Venables reveals that he may have lost her sympathy through an incident which was, at best, a clumsy attempt at seduction. Mabel Fierz, who later became Blair's confidante, said: "He used to say the one thing he wished in this world was that he'd been attractive to women. He liked women and had many girlfriends I think in Burma. He had a girl in Southwold and another girl in London. He was rather a womaniser, yet he was afraid he wasn't attractive."Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books 1984 Brenda Salkield (Southwold) preferred friendship to any deeper relationship and maintained a correspondence with Blair for many years, particularly as a sounding board for his ideas. She wrote: "He was a great letter writer. Endless letters, and I mean when he wrote you a letter he wrote pages." His correspondence with Eleanor Jacques (London) was more prosaic, dwelling on a closer relationship and referring to past rendezvous or planning future ones in London and Burnham Beeches. When Orwell was in the sanatorium in Kent, his wife's friend Lydia Jackson visited. He invited her for a walk and out of sight "an awkward situation arose." Jackson was to be the most critical of Orwell's marriage to

, but their later correspondence hints at a complicity. Eileen at the time was more concerned about Orwell's closeness to Brenda Salkield. Orwell had an affair with his secretary at ''Tribune'' which caused Eileen much distress, and others have been mooted. In a letter to Ann Popham he wrote: "I was sometimes unfaithful to Eileen, and I also treated her badly, and I think she treated me badly, too, at times, but it was a real marriage, in the sense that we had been through awful struggles together and she understood all about my work, etc." Similarly he suggested to Celia Kirwan that they had both been unfaithful. There are several testaments that it was a well-matched and happy marriage.Henry Dakin in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell''Patrica Donahue in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'' In June 1944, Orwell and Eileen adopted a three-week-old boy they named Richard Horatio. According to Richard, Orwell was a wonderful father who gave him devoted, if rather rugged, attention and a great degree of freedom. After Orwell's death Richard went to live with Orwell's sister and her husband. Blair was very lonely after Eileen's death in 1945, and desperate for a wife, both as companion for himself and as mother for Richard. He proposed marriage to four women, including Celia Kirwan, and eventually

accepted. Orwell had met her when she was assistant to Cyril Connolly, at '' Horizon'' literary magazine. They were married on 13 October 1949, only three months before Orwell's death. Some maintain that Sonia was the model for Julia in ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''.

Social interactions

Orwell was noted for very close and enduring friendships with a few friends, but these were generally people with a similar background or with a similar level of literary ability. Ungregarious, he was out of place in a crowd and his discomfort was exacerbated when he was outside his own class. Though representing himself as a spokesman for the common man, he often appeared out of place with real working people. His brother-in-law Humphrey Dakin, a "Hail fellow, well met" type, who took him to a local pub in Leeds, said that he was told by the landlord: "Don't bring that bugger in here again." Adrian Fierz commented "He wasn't interested in racing or greyhounds or pub crawling or

shove ha'penny Shove ha'penny (or shove halfpenny), also known in ancestral form as shoffe-grote ['shove- groat' in Modern English], slype groat ['slip groat'], and slide-thrift, is a pub game in the shuffleboard family, played predominantly ...

. He just did not have much in common with people who did not share his intellectual interests." Awkwardness attended many of his encounters with working-class representatives, as with Pollitt and McNair, but his courtesy and good manners were often commented on.

Jack Common Jack Common (15 August 1903 – 20 January 1968) was a British socialist, essayist and novelist. Writing Common's writing was warm, ironic and quirky. He soon won admirers throughout the 1930s as a writer with a genuine proletarian viewpoint, ...

observed on meeting him for the first time, "Right away manners, and more than manners—breeding—showed through." In his tramping days, he did domestic work for a time. His extreme politeness was recalled by a member of the family he worked for; she declared that the family referred to him as "

Laurel Laurel may refer to: Plants * Lauraceae, the laurel family * Laurel (plant), including a list of trees and plants known as laurel People * Laurel (given name), people with the given name * Laurel (surname), people with the surname * Laurel (mus ...

" after the film comedian. With his gangling figure and awkwardness, Orwell's friends often saw him as a figure of fun. Geoffrey Gorer commented "He was awfully likely to knock things off tables, trip over things. I mean, he was a gangling, physically badly co-ordinated young man. I think his feeling asthat even the inanimate world was against him." When he shared a flat with Heppenstall and Sayer, he was treated in a patronising manner by the younger men. At the BBC in the 1940s, "everybody would pull his leg"Sunday Wilshin in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books 1984 and Spender described him as having real entertainment value "like, as I say, watching a Charlie Chaplin movie". A friend of Eileen's reminisced about her tolerance and humour, often at Orwell's expense. One biography of Orwell accused him of having had an authoritarian streak. In Burma, he struck out at a Burmese boy who, while "fooling around" with his friends, had "accidentally bumped into him" at a station, resulting in Orwell falling "heavily" down some stairs. One of his former pupils recalled being beaten so hard he could not sit down for a week. When sharing a flat with Orwell, Heppenstall came home late one night in an advanced stage of loud inebriation. The upshot was that Heppenstall ended up with a bloody nose and was locked in a room. When he complained, Orwell hit him across the legs with a

shooting stick A shooting stick is a combined walking stick and folding chair. It is generally used as a short-term seat at outdoor events. A traditional United Kingdom, British shooting stick is a wooden or metal shaft terminating at the base in a plate foot ...

and Heppenstall then had to defend himself with a chair. Years later, after Orwell's death, Heppenstall wrote a dramatic account of the incident called "The Shooting Stick" and Mabel Fierz confirmed that Heppenstall came to her in a sorry state the following day. Orwell got on well with young people. The pupil he beat considered him the best of teachers and the young recruits in Barcelona tried to drink him under the table without success. His nephew recalled Uncle Eric laughing louder than anyone in the cinema at a Charlie Chaplin film. In the wake of his most famous works, he attracted many uncritical hangers-on, but many others who sought him found him aloof and even dull. With his soft voice, he was sometimes shouted down or excluded from discussions. At this time, he was severely ill; it was wartime or the austerity period after it; during the war his wife suffered from depression; and after her death he was lonely and unhappy. In addition to that, he always lived frugally and seemed unable to care for himself properly. As a result of all this, people found his circumstances bleak. Some, like

Michael Ayrton Michael Ayrton (20 February 1921 – 16 November 1975)T. G. Rosenthal, "Ayrton , Michael (1921–1975)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008accessed 24 Jan 2015/ref> was a British arti ...

, called him "Gloomy George", but others developed the idea that he was an "English secular saint". Although Orwell was frequently heard on the BBC for panel discussion and one-man broadcasts, no recorded copy of his voice is known to exist.

Lifestyle

Orwell was a heavy smoker, who rolled his own cigarettes from strong

shag tobacco ''Shag Tobacco'' is the third solo album from Gavin Friday. Once again, Friday teamed up with musician Maurice "The Man" Seezer. Bono and The Edge contribute backing vocals on "Little Black Dress". "The Last Song I'll Ever Sing" was dedicated ...

, despite his bronchial condition. His penchant for the rugged life often took him to cold and damp situations, both in the long term, as in Catalonia and Jura, and short term, for example, motorcycling in the rain and suffering a shipwreck. Described by ''The Economist'' as "perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture", Orwell considered fish and chips, football, the

pub A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...

, strong tea, cut-price chocolate,

the movies ''The Movies'' is a business simulation game created by Lionhead Studios for Microsoft Windows and ported to Mac OS X by Feral Interactive. Players run a Hollywood film studio, creating films that can be exported from the game. ''The Movies'' wa ...

, and radio among the chief comforts for the working class. He advocated a patriotic defence of a British way of life that could not be trusted to intellectuals or, by implication, the state: Orwell enjoyed strong tea—he had

Fortnum & Mason Fortnum & Mason (colloquially often shortened to just Fortnum's) is an upmarket department store in Piccadilly, London, with additional stores at The Royal Exchange, St Pancras railway station, Heathrow Airport in London and K11 Musea In Hong ...

's tea brought to him in Catalonia. His 1946 essay, "

A Nice Cup of Tea "A Nice Cup of Tea" is an essay by English author George Orwell, first published in the ''London Evening Standard'' on 12 January 1946. It is a discussion of the craft of making a cup of tea, including the line: "Here are my own eleven rules, ...

", appeared in the ''

London Evening Standard The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format. In October 2009, after be ...

'' article on how to make tea, with Orwell writing, "tea is one of the mainstays of civilisation in this country and causes violent disputes over how it should be made", with the main issue being whether to put tea in the cup first and add the milk afterward, or the other way round, on which he states, "in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject". He appreciated English beer, taken regularly and moderately, despised drinkers of

lager Lager () is beer which has been brewed and conditioned at low temperature. Lagers can be pale, amber, or dark. Pale lager is the most widely consumed and commercially available style of beer. The term "lager" comes from the German for "storag ...

, and wrote about an imagined, ideal British pub in his 1946 ''Evening Standard'' article, " The Moon Under Water". Not as particular about food, he enjoyed the wartime "Victory Pie" and extolled canteen food at the BBC. He preferred traditional English dishes, such as

roast beef Roast beef is a dish of beef that is roasted, generally served as the main dish of a meal. In the Anglosphere, roast beef is one of the meats often served at Sunday lunch or dinner. Yorkshire pudding is a standard side dish. Sliced roast beef ...

, and

kipper A kipper is a whole herring, a small, oily fish, that has been split in a butterfly fashion from tail to head along the dorsal ridge, gutted, salted or pickled, and cold-smoked over smouldering wood chips (typically oak). In the United Ki ...

s. His 1945 essay, "In Defence of English Cooking", included

Yorkshire pudding Yorkshire pudding is a baked pudding made from a batter of eggs, flour, and milk or water. A common British side dish, it is a versatile food that can be served in numerous ways depending on its ingredients, size, and the accompanying compon ...

, crumpets,

muffins A muffin is an individually portioned baked product, however the term can refer to one of two distinct items: a part-raised flatbread (like a crumpet) that is baked and then cooked on a griddle (typically unsweetened), or an (often sweetened) ...

, innumerable biscuits,

Christmas pudding Christmas pudding is sweet dried-fruit pudding traditionally served as part of Christmas dinner in Britain and other countries to which the tradition has been exported. It has its origins in medieval England, with early recipes making use of ...

shortbread Shortbread or shortie is a traditional Scottish biscuit usually made from one part white sugar, two parts butter, and three to four parts plain wheat flour. Unlike many other biscuits and baked goods, shortbread does not contain any leavening, ...

, various British cheeses and Oxford

. Reports of his Islington days refer to the cosy afternoon tea table. His dress sense was unpredictable and usually casual. In Southwold, he had the best cloth from the local tailor, but was equally happy in his tramping outfit. His attire in the Spanish Civil War, along with his size-12 boots, was a source of amusement. David Astor described him as looking like a prep school master, while according to the Special Branch dossier, Orwell's tendency to dress "in Bohemian fashion" revealed that the author was "a Communist". Orwell's confusing approach to matters of social decorum—on the one hand expecting a working-class guest to dress for dinner, and on the other, slurping tea out of a saucer at the BBC canteen—helped stoke his reputation as an English eccentric.

Views

Religion

Graves of Astor and Orwell, All Saints, Sutton Courtenay - geograph

Orwell was an atheist who identified himself with the

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "human ...

outlook on life. Despite this, and despite his criticisms of both religious doctrine and religious organisations, he nevertheless regularly participated in the social and civic life of the church, including by attending

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...

Holy Communion. Acknowledging this contradiction, he once said: "It seems rather mean to go to HC oly Communionwhen one doesn't believe, but I have passed myself off for pious & there is nothing for it but to keep up with the deception." He had two Anglican marriages and left instructions for an Anglican funeral. Orwell was also extremely well-read in Biblical literature and could quote lengthy passages from the

Book of Common Prayer The ''Book of Common Prayer'' (BCP) is the name given to a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion and by other Christian churches historically related to Anglicanism. The original book, published in 1549 in the reign ...

from memory. His extensive knowledge of the Bible came coupled with unsparing criticism of its philosophy, and as an adult he could not bring himself to believe in its tenets. He said in part V of his essay, " Such, Such Were the Joys", that "Till about the age of fourteen I believed in God, and believed that the accounts given of him were true. But I was well aware that I did not love him." Orwell directly contrasted Christianity with secular humanism in his essay " Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool", finding the latter philosophy more palatable and less "self-interested". Literary critic James Wood wrote that in the struggle, as he saw it, between Christianity and humanism, "Orwell was on the humanist side, of course—basically an unmetaphysical, English version of Camus's philosophy of perpetual godless struggle." Orwell's writing was often explicitly critical of religion, and Christianity in particular. He found the church to be a "selfish ..church of the landed gentry" with its establishment "out of touch" with the majority of its communicants and altogether a pernicious influence on public life. In their 1972 study, ''The Unknown Orwell'', the writers Peter Stansky and William Abrahams noted that at Eton Blair displayed a "sceptical attitude" to Christian belief. Crick observed that Orwell displayed "a pronounced anti-Catholicism".

, writing in 1946, acknowledged Orwell's high moral sense and respect for justice but believed "he seems never to have been touched at any point by a conception of religious thought and life." His contradictory and sometimes ambiguous views about the social benefits of religious affiliation mirrored the dichotomies between his public and private lives: Stephen Ingle wrote that it was as if the writer George Orwell "vaunted" his unbelief while Eric Blair the individual retained "a deeply ingrained religiosity".

Politics

Orwell liked to provoke arguments by challenging the status quo, but he was also a traditionalist with a love of old English values. He criticised and satirised, from the inside, the various social milieux in which he found himself—provincial town life in ''A Clergyman's Daughter''; middle-class pretension in ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying''; preparatory schools in "Such, Such Were the Joys"; and some socialist groups in ''

''. In his ''Adelphi'' days, he described himself as a "

Tory A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. The ...

- anarchist". Of

colonialism Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colony, colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose the ...

in ''Burmese Days'', he portrays the English colonists as a "dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets." In 1928, Orwell began his career as a professional writer in Paris at a journal owned by the French Communist

. His first article, "La Censure en Angleterre" ("Censorship in England"), was an attempt to account for the "extraordinary and illogical" moral censorship of plays and novels then practised in Britain. His own explanation was that the rise of the "puritan middle class", who had stricter morals than the aristocracy, tightened the rules of censorship in the 19th century. Orwell's first published article in his home country, "A Farthing Newspaper", was a critique of the new French daily the ''Ami du Peuple''. This paper was sold much more cheaply than most others, and was intended for ordinary people to read. Orwell pointed out that its proprietor François Coty also owned the right-wing dailies ''

Le Figaro ''Le Figaro'' () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The oldest national newspaper in France, ''Le Figaro'' is one of three French newspapers of r ...

'' and ''

Le Gaulois ''Le Gaulois'' () was a French daily newspaper, founded in 1868 by Edmond Tarbé and Henry de Pène. After a printing stoppage, it was revived by Arthur Meyer in 1882 with notable collaborators Paul Bourget, Alfred Grévin, Abel Hermant, an ...

'', which the ''Ami du Peuple'' was supposedly competing against. Orwell suggested that cheap newspapers were no more than a vehicle for advertising and anti-leftist propaganda, and predicted the world might soon see

free newspapers Free newspapers are distributed free of charge, often in central places in cities and towns, on public transport, with other newspapers, or separately door-to-door. The revenues of such newspapers are based on advertising. They are published at ...

which would drive legitimate dailies out of business. Writing for ''Le Progrès Civique'', Orwell described the British colonial government in Burma and India:

Spanish Civil War and socialism

The Spanish Civil War played the most important part in defining Orwell's socialism. He wrote to Cyril Connolly from Barcelona on 8 June 1937: "I have seen wonderful things and at last really believe in Socialism, which I never did before." Having witnessed the success of the

communities, for example in

Anarchist Catalonia Revolutionary Catalonia (21 July 1936 – 10 February 1939) was the part of Catalonia (autonomous region in northeast Spain) controlled by various anarchist, communist, and socialist trade unions, parties, and militias of the Spanish Civil W ...

, and the subsequent brutal suppression of the anarcho-syndicalists, anti-Stalin communist parties and revolutionaries by the Soviet Union-backed Communists, Orwell returned from Catalonia a staunch anti- Stalinist and joined the British

, his card being issued on 13 June 1938. Although he was never a

, he was strongly influenced by the Trotskyist and anarchist critiques of the Soviet regime, and by the anarchists' emphasis on individual freedom. In Part 2 of ''The Road to Wigan Pier'', published by the Left Book Club, Orwell stated that "a real Socialist is one who wishes—not merely conceives it as desirable, but actively wishes—to see tyranny overthrown". Orwell stated in "Why I Write" (1946): "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against

totalitarianism Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regu ...

and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." Orwell's conception of socialism was of a planned economy alongside democracy, which was the common notion of socialism in the early and middle 20th century. Orwell's emphasis on "democracy" primarily referred to a strong emphasis on civil liberties within a socialist economy as opposed to majoritarian rule, though he was not necessarily opposed to majority rule. Orwell was a proponent of a federal socialist Europe, a position outlined in his 1947 essay "Toward European Unity", which first appeared in ''

''. According to biographer John Newsinger: In his 1938 essay "Why I joined the Independent Labour Party," published in the ILP-affiliated ''

New Leader ''The New Leader'' (1924–2010) was an American political and cultural magazine. History ''The New Leader'' began in 1924 under a group of figures associated with the Socialist Party of America, such as Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas. It was p ...

'', Orwell wrote: Towards the end of the essay, he wrote: "I do not mean I have lost all faith in the Labour Party. My most earnest hope is that the Labour Party will win a clear majority in the next General Election."

The Second World War

Orwell was opposed to rearmament against

and at the time of the

Munich Agreement The Munich Agreement ( cs, Mnichovská dohoda; sk, Mníchovská dohoda; german: Münchner Abkommen) was an agreement concluded at Munich on 30 September 1938, by Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. It provided "cession to Germany ...

he signed a manifesto entitled "If War Comes We Shall Resist"—but he changed his view after the

and the outbreak of the war. He left the ILP because of its opposition to the war and adopted a political position of "revolutionary patriotism". On 21 March 1940 he wrote a review of

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

's '' Mein Kampf'' for '' The New English Weekly'', in which he analysed the dictator's psychology. According to Orwell "a thing that strikes one is the rigidity of his mind, the way in which his world-view doesn't develop. It is the fixed vision of a monomaniac and not likely to be much affected by the temporary manoeuvres of power politics". Asking "how was it that he was able to put ismonstrous vision across?", Orwell tried to understand why Hitler was worshipped by the German people: "The situation in Germany, with its seven million unemployed, was obviously favourable for demagogues. But Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of ''Mein Kampf'', and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches...The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. The initial, personal cause of his grievance against the universe can only be guessed at; but at any rate the grievance is here. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon." In December 1940 he wrote in ''Tribune'' (the Labour left's weekly): "We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary." During the war, Orwell was highly critical of the popular idea that an Anglo-Soviet alliance would be the basis of a post-war world of peace and prosperity. In 1942, commenting on London ''Times'' editor E. H. Carr's pro-Soviet views, Orwell stated that "all the appeasers, e.g. Professor E.H. Carr, have switched their allegiance from Hitler to Stalin". In his reply (dated 15 November 1943) to an invitation from the Duchess of Atholl to speak for the British League for European Freedom, he stated that he did not agree with their objectives. He admitted that what they said was "more truthful than the lying propaganda found in most of the press", but added that he could not "associate himself with an essentially Conservative body" that claimed to "defend democracy in Europe" but had "nothing to say about British imperialism". His closing paragraph stated: "I belong to the Left and must work inside it, much as I hate Russian totalitarianism and its poisonous influence in this country."Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds.). ''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose (1945–1950)'' (Penguin)

''Tribune'' and post-war Britain

Orwell joined the staff of ''

'' magazine as literary editor, and from then until his death, was a left-wing (though hardly orthodox) Labour-supporting democratic socialist. On 1 September 1944, writing about the

Warsaw uprising The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occurred in the summer of 1944, and it was led ...

, Orwell expressed in ''Tribune'' his hostility against the influence of the alliance with the USSR over the allies: "Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for. Do not imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the sovietic regime, or any other regime, and then suddenly return to honesty and reason. Once a whore, always a whore." According to Newsinger, although Orwell "was always critical of the 1945–51 Labour government's moderation, his support for it began to pull him to the right politically. This did not lead him to embrace conservatism, imperialism or reaction, but to defend, albeit critically, Labour reformism." Between 1945 and 1947, with A. J. Ayer and

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...

, he contributed a series of articles and essays to ''

Polemic Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called ''polemics'', which are seen in arguments on controversial topic ...

'', a short-lived British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" edited by the ex-Communist Humphrey Slater.Collini, Stefan (2006).
Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain
'. Oxford University Press. Writing in early 1945 a long essay titled "Antisemitism in Britain", for the ''Contemporary Jewish Record'', Orwell stated that antisemitism was on the increase in Britain and that it was "irrational and will not yield to arguments". He argued that it would be useful to discover why anti-Semites could "swallow such absurdities on one particular subject while remaining sane on others". He wrote: "For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. ... Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own anti-Semitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness." In ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', written shortly after the war, Orwell portrayed the Party as enlisting anti-Semitic passions against their enemy, Goldstein. Orwell publicly defended P. G. Wodehouse against charges of being a Nazism, Nazi sympathiser—occasioned by his agreement to do some broadcasts over the German radio in 1941—a defence based on Wodehouse's lack of interest in and ignorance of politics. Special Branch, the intelligence division of the Metropolitan Police, maintained a file on Orwell for more than 20 years of his life. The dossier, published by The National Archives (United Kingdom), The National Archives, states that, according to one investigator, Orwell had "advanced Communist views and several of his Indian friends say that they have often seen him at Communist meetings". MI5, the intelligence department of the Home Office, noted: "It is evident from his recent writings—'The Lion and the Unicorn'—and his contribution to Gollancz's symposium ''The Betrayal of the Left'' that he does not hold with the Communist Party nor they with him."

Sexuality

Sexual politics plays an important role in ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. In the novel, people's intimate relationships are strictly governed by the party's Nineteen Eighty-Four#Sexual repression, Junior Anti-Sex League, by opposing sexual relations and instead encouraging artificial insemination. Personally, Orwell disliked what he thought as misguided middle-class revolutionary Emancipation, emancipatory views, expressing disdain for "every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniacs". Orwell was also openly against homosexuality, at a time when such prejudice was common. Speaking at the 2003 George Orwell Centenary Conference, Daphne Patai said: "Of course he was homophobic. That has nothing to do with his relations with his homosexual friends. Certainly, he had a negative attitude and a certain kind of anxiety, a denigrating attitude towards homosexuality. That is definitely the case. I think his writing reflects that quite fully." Orwell used the homophobic epithets "nancy" and "pansy", for example, in expressions of contempt for what he called the "pansy Left", and "nancy poets", i.e. left-wing homosexual or bisexual writers and intellectuals such as

and W. H. Auden. The protagonist of ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying'', Gordon Comstock, conducts an internal critique of his customers when working in a bookshop, and there is an extended passage of several pages in which he concentrates on a homosexual male customer, and sneers at him for his "nancy" characteristics, including a lisp, gay lisp, which he identifies in detail, with some disgust. Stephen Spender "thought Orwell's occasional homophobic outbursts were part of his rebellion against the public school".

Biographies of Orwell

Orwell's will requested that no biography of him be written, and his widow, Sonia Brownell, repelled every attempt by those who tried to persuade her to let them write about him. Various recollections and interpretations were published in the 1950s and 1960s, but Sonia saw the 1968 ''Collected Works'' as the record of his life. She did appoint

as official biographer, but later biographers have seen this as deliberate spoiling as Muggeridge eventually gave up the work.D.J. Taylor ''Orwell: The Life''. Henry Holt and Company. 2003. In 1972, two American authors, Peter Stansky and William Abrahams, produced ''The Unknown Orwell'', an unauthorised account of his early years that lacked any support or contribution from Sonia Brownell. Sonia Brownell then commissioned Bernard Crick, a professor of politics at the University of London, to complete a biography and asked Orwell's friends to co-operate. Crick collated a considerable amount of material in his work, which was published in 1980, but his questioning of the factual accuracy of Orwell's first-person writings led to conflict with Brownell, and she tried to suppress the book. Crick concentrated on the facts of Orwell's life rather than his character, and presented primarily a political perspective on Orwell's life and work. After Sonia Brownell's death, other works on Orwell were published in the 1980s, particularly in 1984. These included collections of reminiscences by Audrey Coppard and Crick and Stephen Wadhams. In 1991, Michael Shelden, an American professor of literature, published a biography. More concerned with the literary nature of Orwell's work, he sought explanations for Orwell's character and treated his first-person writings as autobiographical. Shelden introduced new information that sought to build on Crick's work.Gordon Bowker – ''Orwell and the biographers'' in John Rodden ''The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell'' Cambridge University Press 2007 Shelden speculated that Orwell possessed an obsessive belief in his failure and inadequacy. Peter Davison (professor), Peter Davison's publication of the ''Complete Works of George Orwell'', completed in 2000, made most of the Orwell Archive accessible to the public. Jeffrey Meyers, a prolific American biographer, was first to take advantage of this and published a book in 2001 that investigated the darker side of Orwell and questioned his saintly image. ''Why Orwell Matters'' (released in the United Kingdom as ''Orwell's Victory'') was published by

in 2002. In 2003, the centenary of Orwell's birth resulted in biographies by Gordon Philip Bowker, Gordon Bowker and D. J. Taylor, both academics and writers in the United Kingdom. Taylor notes the stage management which surrounds much of Orwell's behaviour and Bowker highlights the essential sense of decency which he considers to have been Orwell's main motivation.Review: ''Orwell by DJ Taylor and George Orwell by Gordon Bowker'' Observer on Sunday 1 June 2003 In 2018 Ronald Binns published the first detailed study of Orwell's years in Suffolk, ''Orwell in Southwold''.

Bibliography

Novels

* 1934 – ''

'' * 1935 – '' A Clergyman's Daughter'' * 1936 – ''

'' * 1939 – ''

'' * 1945 – ''

'' * 1949 – ''

Nonfiction

* 1933 – ''

'' * 1937 – ''

'' * 1938 – ''

Notes

References

Sources

* Anderson, Paul (ed.). ''Orwell in Tribune: 'As I Please' and Other Writings''. Methuen/Politico's 2006. * Joxe Azurmendi, Azurmendi, Joxe (1984): George Orwell. 1984: Reality exists in the human mind, ''Jakin (magazine), Jakin'', 32: 87–103. * Philip Bounds, Bounds, Philip. ''Orwell and Marxism: The Political and Cultural Thinking of George Orwell''. I.B. Tauris. 2009. * Gordon Bowker (writer), Bowker, Gordon. ''George Orwell''. Little Brown. 2003. * Buddicom, Jacintha. ''Eric & Us''. Finlay Publisher. 2006. * Caute, David. ''Dr. Orwell and Mr. Blair'', Weidenfeld & Nicolson. * Bernard Crick, Crick, Bernard. ''George Orwell: A Life''. Penguin. 1982. * Peter Davison (professor), Davison, Peter; Angus, Ian; Davison, Sheila (eds.). 2000 ''A Kind of Compulsion''. London: Random House * Flynn, Nigel. ''George Orwell''. The Rourke Corporation, Inc. 1990. * Haycock, David Boyd. ''I Am Spain: The Spanish Civil War and the Men and Women who went to Fight Fascism''. Old Street Publishing. 2013. * Christopher Hitchens, Hitchens, Christopher. ''Why Orwell Matters''. Basic Books. 2003. * Hollis, Christopher. ''A Study of George Orwell: The Man and His Works''. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co. 1956. * Larkin, Emma. ''Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop''. Penguin. 2005. * Lee, Robert A. ''Orwell's Fiction''. University of Notre Dame Press, 1969. * Leif, Ruth Ann. ''Homage to Oceania. The Prophetic Vision of George Orwell''. Ohio State U.P. [1969] * Meyers, Jeffery. ''Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation''. W.W. Norton. 2000. * John Newsinger, Newsinger, John. ''Orwell's Politics''. Macmillan. 1999. * . * * Rodden, John (ed.). ''The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell''. Cambridge. 2007. * Michael Shelden, Shelden, Michael. ''Orwell: The Authorized Biography''. HarperCollins. 1991. * Smith, D. & Mosher, M. ''Orwell for Beginners''. 1984. London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative. * D. J. Taylor, Taylor, D. J. ''Orwell: The Life''. Henry Holt and Company. 2003. * West, W. J. ''The Larger Evils''. Edinburgh: Canongate Press. 1992. (Nineteen Eighty-Four – The truth behind the satire.) * West, W. J. (ed.). ''George Orwell: The Lost Writings''. New York: Arbor House. 1984. * Raymond Williams, Williams, Raymond. ''Orwell'', Fontana/Collins, 1971 * Wood, James. "A Fine Rage." ''The New Yorker''. 2009. 85(9):54. * George Woodcock, Woodcock, George. ''The Crystal Spirit''. Little Brown. 1966.

External links

Blair, Eric Arthur (George Orwell) (1903–1950) at the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''

George Orwell
at the British Library Works: * * *
The complete works of George Orwell (george-orwell.org)
a fan site Catalogs and collections: * *
Orwell Papers
at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

Orwell Collection
(rare and early editions of Orwell's works) at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Orwell, George George Orwell, 1903 births 1950 deaths 20th-century atheists 20th-century British journalists 20th-century British novelists 20th-century British poets 20th-century deaths from tuberculosis 20th-century English historians 20th-century English male writers 20th-century English non-fiction writers 20th-century English novelists 20th-century English philosophers 20th-century English poets 20th-century essayists 20th-century poets 20th-century pseudonymous writers Administrators in British Burma Anti-Stalinist left Aphorists Atheist philosophers British anti-communists British anti-fascists British Anti-Francoists British atheists British booksellers Indian Police Service officers in British India British critics British democracy activists British ethicists British people of the Spanish Civil War British Home Guard soldiers British investigative journalists British male essayists British male journalists British memoirists British opinion journalists British people in colonial India British people of World War II British political writers British propagandists British reporters and correspondents British satirists British sceptics British secularists British shooting survivors British socialists British writers in French Burials in Oxfordshire Constructed language creators Critics of Christianity Critics of religions Critics of the Catholic Church Cultural critics Democratic socialists English anti-fascists English atheists English booksellers English critics English democracy activists English essayists English humanists English male journalists English male non-fiction writers English memoirists English people of French descent English political writers English reporters and correspondents English satirists English sceptics English social commentators English socialists English war correspondents European democratic socialists Foreign volunteers in the Spanish Civil War Free speech activists Freethought writers Futurologists Historians of fascism Hugo Award-winning writers Irony theorists Journalists from Bihar Literacy and society theorists Literary theorists Male essayists Mass media theorists Modernist writers Moral philosophers Neologists Novelists from Bihar People educated at Eton College People educated at St Cyprian's School People educated at Wellington College, Berkshire People from Henley-on-Thames People from Motihari People from Shiplake Philosophers of culture Philosophers of education Philosophers of ethics and morality Philosophers of history Philosophers of language Philosophers of literature Philosophers of social science Philosophers of war Poets from Bihar Political philosophers Rhetoric theorists Secular humanists Social commentators Social critics Social philosophers Theorists on Western civilization Tuberculosis deaths in England Writers about activism and social change Writers about communism

Life

Early years

Policing in Burma

London and Paris

Southwold

Teaching career

Hampstead

''The Road to Wigan Pier''

Spanish Civil War

Rest and recuperation

Second World War and ''Animal Farm''

Jura and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''

Final months and death

Literary career and legacy

Literary influences

Orwell as literary critic

Food writing

Reception and evaluations of Orwell's works

Influence on language and writing

Modern culture

Statue

Personal life

Childhood

Relationships and marriage

Social interactions

Lifestyle

Views

Religion

Politics

Spanish Civil War and socialism

The Second World War

''Tribune'' and post-war Britain

Sexuality

Biographies of Orwell

Bibliography

Novels

Nonfiction

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

External links