Eric Arthur Blair
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3
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George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903, fought in the Spanish Civil War alongside Trotskyite troops and barely escaped with his life. He wrote the satirical novella Animal Farm in 1945 and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, both warning against totalitarianism. Orwell died of tuberculosis on January 21, 1950, just months after Nineteen Eighty-Four was published.
Names, aliases, and relatives of George Orwell — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
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George Orwell — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
Eric Arthur Blair was born on June 25, 1903 in Motihari, Bengal Presidency, British India, to Ida Mabel Limouzin and Richard Walmesley Blair. His father worked as an opium agent, and the family moved to England when Orwell was young. He was educated at St Cyprian’s School, Wellington College, and Eton College, leaving Eton in 1921. His early years were marked by a distant father figure and a dislike for the rigid discipline of boarding school.
Orwell joined the British Imperial Police in Burma in 1922, serving until 1927. His experiences there inspired his first novel, Burmese Days 1934. After returning to Europe, he lived among the poor in London and Paris, documenting his experiences in Down and Out in Paris and London 1933. In 1936, he married Eileen Blair and fought in the Spanish Civil War, where he was shot in the neck. That conflict shaped his hatred of Stalinism, leading to Animal Farm 1945, a thinly veiled allegory of the Soviet Union. During World War II, he worked for the BBC making propaganda broadcasts and later wrote his masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four 1949, completed in 1948 on the Isle of Jura.
Orwell married Eileen O’Shaughnessy on June 9, 1936; they adopted a son, Richard Horatio, in 1944. Eileen died suddenly during surgery on March 28, 1945. On October 13, 1949, Orwell married Sonia Brownell from his hospital bed in London; they remained married until his death. He had two sisters, Marjorie and Avril, and was second cousin to actor John Le Mesurier. Orwell was a heavy smoker and ignored doctors’ advice about his failing health.
Orwell’s works Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm have become cornerstones of dystopian and political literature, coining terms like Big Brother and doublethink. He popularized the phrase cold war in a 1945 essay. Posthumously, he received the Prometheus Award – Hall of Fame, the Hugo Award for Best Novella, and the Retro Hugo Award for Best Novella. His grave in Sutton Courtenay bears only his birth name, Eric Arthur Blair, reflecting his enduring influence on language and political thought.
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A wall of memorable lines from George Orwell — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
Political Language . . . Is Designed to Make Lies Sound Truthful and Murder Respectable, and to Give an Appearance of Solidity to Pure Wind.
He Who Controls the Past Controls the Future, Who Controls the Present Controls the Past.
No One Can Look Back on His Schooldays and Say with Truth That They Were Altogether Unhappy.
No Doubt Alcohol, Tobacco, and so Forth Are Things That a Saint Must Avoid, but Sainthood Is Also a Thing That Human Beings Must Avoid . . . Many People Genuinely Do Not Wish to Be Saints, and It Is Probable That Some Who Achieve or Aspire to Sainthood Have Never Felt Much Temptation to Be Human Beings.
Freedom Is the Freedom to Say That Two Plus Two Make Four. If That Is Granted, All Else Follows.
One Must Choose Between God and Man, and All Radicals and Progressives, from the Mildest Liberal to the Most Extreme Anarchist, Have in Effect Chosen Man.
As with the Christian Religion, the Worst Advertisement for Socialism Is Its Adherents.
One Defeats a Fanatic Precisely by Not Being a Fanatic Oneself, but on the Contrary by Using One’s Intelligence.
If Liberty Means Anything at All, It Means the Right to Tell People What They Do Not Want to Hear.
Doublethink Means the Power of Holding Two Contradictory Beliefs in One’s Mind Simultaneously, and Accepting Both of Them.
At 50, Everyone Has the Face He Deserves.
England Is Perhaps the Only Great Country Whose Intellectuals Are Ashamed of Their Nationality. in Left Wing Circles It Is Always Felt That There Is Something Slightly Disgraceful in Being an Englishman and That It Is a Duty to Snigger at Every English Institution, from Horse Racing to Suet Puddings. It Is a Strange Fact, but It Is Unquestionably True That Almost Any English Intellectual Would Feel More Ashamed of Standing to Attention During God Save the King Than of Stealing from the Poorbox.
Take Away Freedom of Speech, and the Creative Faculties Dry Up.
In an Empire of Lies, Telling the Truth Is a Radical Act.
The Child and the Adult Live in Different Worlds. If That Is So, We Cannot Be Certain That School, at Any Rate Boarding School, Is Not Still for Many Children as Dreadful an Experience as It Used to Be. Take Away God, Latin, the Cane, Class Distinctions and Sexual Taboos, and the Fear, the Hatred, the Snobbery and the Misunderstanding Might Still All Be There. It Will Have Been Seen That My Own Main Trouble Was an Utter Lack of Any Sense of Proportion or Probability. This Led Me to Accept Outrages and Believe Absurdities, and to Suffer Torments Over Things Which Were in Fact of No Importance. It Is Not Enough to Say That I Was ‘Silly’ and ‘Ought to Have Known Better’. Look Back into Your Own Childhood and Think of the Nonsense You Used to Believe and the Trivialities Which Could Make You Suffer. of Course My Own Case Had Its Individual Variations, but Essentially It Was That of Countless Other Boys. the Weakness of the Child Is That It Starts with a Blank Sheet. It Neither Understands nor Questions the Society in Which It Lives, and Because of Its Credulity Other People Can Work Upon It, Infecting It with the Sense of Inferiority and the Dread of Offending Against Mysterious, Terrible Laws. It May Be That Everything That Happened to Me at St Cyprian’s Could Happen in the Most ‘Enlightened’ School, Though Perhaps in Subtler Forms. of One Thing, However, I Do Feel Fairly Sure, and That Is That Boarding Schools Are Worse Than Day Schools. a Child Has a Better Chance with the Sanctuary of Its Home near at Hand. and I Think the Characteristic Faults of the English Upper and Middle Classes May Be Partly Due to the Practice, General Until Recently, of Sending Children Away from Home as Young as Nine, Eight or Even Seven.
But If Thought Corrupts Language, Language Can Also Corrupt Thought. a Bad Usage Can Spread by Tradition and Imitation Even Among People Who Should and Do Know Better. the Debased Language That I Have Been Discussing Is in Some Ways Very Convenient.
Perhaps a Lunatic Was Simply a Minority of One.
Socialists Don’t Love the Poor They Hate the Rich.
Nationalism Is Power Hunger Tempered by Self Deception.
No One Seizes Power with the Intention of Relinquishing It Later.
In War, All the Screaming Hate and Propaganda Inevitably Come from Those Who Are Not Fighting.
When a War Comes, It Is Never Announced as a War, but as an Act of Self Defense Against a Dangerous Madman.
Freedom Is the Right to Tell People What They Do Not Want to Hear.
Nothing Exists Except for an Endless Present in Which the Party Is Always Right.
That Which Cannot Be Expressed Cannot Be Thought.
The Catholic and the Communist Are Alike in Assuming That an Opponent Cannot Be Both Honest and Intelligent.
I Was Born in the Upper Lower Middle Class.
Journalism Is Printing What Someone Else Does Not Want Printed. Everything Else Is Public Relations.
What I Have Most Wanted to Do Is to Make Political Writing into an Art.
Looking Back Through My Work, I See That It Is Invariably Where I Lacked a Political Purpose That I Wrote Lifeless Books and Was Betrayed into Purple Passages, Sentences Without Meaning, Decorative Adjectives and Humbug Generally.
O’ Brien Let Me Put It Like This: Is There a Physical Place Where the Past Exists?
It Was a Bright Cold Day in April, and the Clocks Were Striking 13.
Little-known facts about George Orwell — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Room 101 in Nineteen Eighty-Four, a nightmarish place where an individual’s worst fear comes true, was named after a conference room at the BBC that Orwell found boring.
Buried in Sutton Courtenay churchyard near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, because no London church had space; his grave reads only Eric Arthur Blair with no mention of his pen name.
Chose the title Nineteen Eighty-Four by inverting the last two digits of the year he completed the manuscript 1948.
Recorded propaganda broadcasts for Britain during World War II, aimed at Southeast Asia and the Pacific, sparring against pro-Japanese propagandist Subhas Chandra Bose.
Orwell and his wife Eileen adopted a son, Richard Horatio.
As an example of his socialist views, he spent time living on the streets among tramps in London and Kent, detailed in his diaries.
Two TV series, Big Brother and Room 101, are humorous takes on his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Died only a few months after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Reportedly was satisfied with his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Works such as Animal Farm and Down and Out in Paris and London were initially rejected by major publishers.
Wrote Animal Farm after fighting in the Spanish Civil War alongside Trotskyites, barely escaping Spain; it is a metaphor for Stalinist Russia.
Wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four on the Hebridean Isle of Jura.
Provided the British government with a list of suspected Communist sympathizers, including Charlie Chaplin, Michael Redgrave, and J.B. Priestley.
No recording of his voice exists; the BBC’s early archiving policy led to the loss of his broadcasts.
By the time he worked on Nineteen Eighty-Four, he was gravely ill with tuberculosis.
Lived in relative seclusion on a Scottish island in his final years.
Had a brief career as a teacher in the 1930s, abandoned after a bout of flu.
Known to smoke heavily while writing.
Animal Farm was viewed as a satirical attack on the Soviet government.
His written output includes approximately 3,000 pages of news articles and novels.
Worked at a bookshop in Hampstead from late 1934 to early 1936, which inspired Keep the Aspidistra Flying.
Shot in the neck during the Spanish Civil War; recovered after weeks in hospital.
After the success of The Road to Wigan Pier, he was finally able to support himself as a writer.
His first wife Eileen died suddenly during surgery following a reaction to anesthetic.
During WWII, he churned out a story or article every other day.
Married for a second time in 1949 from his hospital bed in London.
Worked for the BBC from 1941 but resigned after two years, detesting the job.
Served in the British Imperial Police in Burma until 1927; experiences inspired Burmese Days.
Witnessed a public hanging in Burma that nauseated him.
Chose the pen name George Orwell to ensure his parents wouldn’t discover he was a writer.
Ignored doctors’ advice about his bad chest and coughing fits, especially when it interfered with writing.
Retrieved the manuscript of Animal Farm from his bombed London home in 1944.
Of Clan Blair.
Dislikes included modern furniture, radio, central heating, big towns, and noise pollution.
A boarding school survivor.
Peter Davison, editor of the 20-volume The Complete Works, was born in 1926 and died in 2022.
Worked part time as a bookseller to supplement his income.
As a child, rarely saw his father due to his job abroad.
Dreaded the rigid discipline of boarding school.
During WWII, disappointed at being rejected for active service, he joined the Home Guard.
Enjoyed authors Charles Dickens, James Joyce, William Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence, and T.S. Eliot.
Subject of a 5-part BBC TV documentary from the series Arena 1975.
Second cousin of John Le Mesurier; their shared maternal grandmother was elder sister of Le Mesurier’s paternal grandfather.
Played by Ronald Pickup in the TV film The Crystal Spirit: Orwell on Jura.
May have been the first to use the term cold war in his essay You and the Atom Bomb, published on October 19, 1945.
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