ABSTRACT
George Orwell, author of the world famous Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), was also one of the greatest journalists of the last century. Born Eric Arthur Blair in Motihari, Bengal, in 1903, he won a scholarship to Eton but in 1921 left the college 138th out of 167 candidates in final-year exams. Confounding the expectations of his family, he sailed for Rangoon, Burma, to become a probationary assistant district superintendent of the Imperial Police. But he grew disillusioned with British imperialism and in 1927 resigned ‘on medical grounds’. That winter he went ‘down and out’ in London’s East End and the following year moved to a cheap hotel in Paris. He adopted the pseudonym George Orwell in November 1932, and Down and Out in Paris and London was published during the following year. The novels Burmese Days (1935), A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935) and Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) followed in quick succession. In 1936 he travelled through northern England, the West Midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire researching the working class, and in December delivered the manuscript of The Road to Wigan Pier before leaving for Spain, which was in the grip of civil war. Here he fought for the Republicans against the fascists led by General Franco and was wounded, his experiences (and his conversion to socialism) being captured in Homage to Catalonia (1938). After two unhappy years working for the BBC’s Eastern Service, in February 1943 he became literary editor of Tribune, writing the weekly As I Please column. In 1945 he served as a war correspondent on the Continent for David Astor’s Observer. The same year also saw the publication of Animal Farm, which secured massive sales in Britain and the United States, and he began spending part of every 12 months in a cottage on the remote Scottish island of Jura, Inner Hebrides. While his health continued to deteriorate he worked on completing Nineteen Eighty-Four. He died in 1950 aged just 46, soon after marrying his second wife, Sonia.
