George Orwell 19031950 Biography Eric Blair was

George Orwell (19031950)

Biography Eric Blair was born in 1903 in Motihari, Bengal, in then British colony of India, where his father, Richard, worked for the Opium Department of the Civil Service. His mother, Ida, brought him to England at the age of one. He did not see his father again until 1907, when Richard visited England for three months before leaving again until 1912. Eric Blair three years old, 1906.

Biography Eric had an older sister named Marjorie and a younger sister named Avril. With his characteristic humour, he would later describe his family's background as "lowerupper-middle class. " Mr Blair on leave, 1916. (Parents -- Ida Mabel and Richard Walmesley Blair with children Marjorie and Eric)

Education At the age of five, Blair was sent to a small Anglican parish school in Henley, which his sister had attended before him. He never wrote of his recollections of it, but he must have impressed the teachers very favourably for two years later he was recommended to the headmaster of one of the most successful preparatory schools in England at the time: St Cyprian's School, in Eastbourne, Sussex. Orwell (right), aged 14, with two childhood friends, Prosper and Guiniver Buddicom, during the school holidays near Henley.

Education Young Eric attended St Cyprian's on a scholarship that allowed his parents to pay only half of the usual fees. Many years later, he would recall his time at St Cyprian's with biting resentment in the essay "Such, Such Were the Joys, " but he did well enough to earn scholarships to both Wellington and Eton colleges. After a term at Wellington, Eric moved to Eton, where he was a King's Scholar from 1917 to 1921. At Athens after swimming, summer 1919. Etonian gambolling on the beach near Athens, summer vacation 1919. Eric Blair far right.

Burma After finishing his studies at Eton, having no prospect of gaining a university scholarship and his family's means being insufficient to pay his tuition, Eric joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma Provincial Police Training School, Mandalay, 1923. (Eric Blair standing third from left)

Spanish Civil War The P. O. U. M. centuria leaving Lenin barracks, Barcelona, January 1937. Soon after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Orwell volunteered to fight for the Republicans against Franco's Nationalist uprising. As a sympathiser of the Independent Labour Party (of which he became a member in 1938), he joined the militia of its sister party in Spain, the non. Stalinist far-left POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), in which he fought as an infantryman.

During the world war 'VOICE' -- the monthly radio magazine programme in the Eastern Service of the B. B. C. (Left to right, sitting) Venu Chitale, J. M. Tambimuttu, T. S. Eliot, Una Marson, Mulk Raj Anand, C. Pemberton, Narayana Menon; (standing) George Orwell, Nancy Barrat, William Empson. Orwell began supporting himself by writing book reviews for the New English Weekly until 1940. During World War II he was a member of the Home Guard and in 1941 began work for the BBC Eastern Service, mostly working on programmes to gain Indian and East Asian support for Britain's war efforts. He was well aware that he was shaping propaganda, and wrote that he felt like "an orange that's been trodden on by a very dirty boot. "

During the world war In 1944 Orwell finished his anti-Stalinist allegory Animal Farm, which was published the following year with great critical and popular success.

Animal Farm is an allegorical novel, published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscowdirected Stalinism, especially after his experiences with the NKVD and the Spanish Civil War. The Soviet Union, he believed, had become a brutal dictatorship, built upon a cult of personality and enforced by a reign of terror. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described Animal Farm as his novel "contre Stalin", and in his essay "Why I Write" (1946), he wrote that Animal Farm was the first book in which he had tried, with full consciousness of what he was doing, "to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole".

Orwell's work Orwell taking a break from writing, winter 1945. During most of his career Orwell was best known for his journalism, both in the British press and in books of reportage such as Homage to Catalonia (describing his experiences during the Spanish Civil War), Down and Out in Paris and London (describing a period of poverty in these cities), and The Road to Wigan Pier (which described the living conditions of poor miners in northern England). According to Newsweek, Orwell "was the finest journalist of his day and the foremost architect of the English essay since Hazlitt. "

Orwell's work Contemporary readers are more often introduced to Orwell as a novelist, particularly through his enormously successful titles Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Lifestyle Not as particular about food, he enjoyed the wartime "Victory Pie" extolled canteen food at the BBC, and once ate the cat's dinner by mistake. He preferred traditional English dishes, such as roast beef and kippers. Reports of his Islington days refer to the cosy afternoon tea table. Orwell was a heavy smoker, rolling his own cigarettes from strong shag tobacco, in spite of 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. His love of strong tea was legendary —he had Fortnum & Mason's tea brought to him in Catalonia and in 1946 published "A Nice Cup of Tea" on how to make it. He appreciated English beer, taken regularly and moderately, despised drinkers of lager and wrote about an imagined, ideal pub in his 1946 newspaper article "The Moon Under Water".

Lifestyle 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.

Relationships Eileen Blair whom Orwell married in 1936. They adopted a boy in 1944 named Richard. Eileen died after 10 years of their marriage.

Relationships Orwell was very lonely after Eileen's death, and desperate for a wife, both as companion for himself and as mother for Richard. He proposed marriage to four women, and eventually Sonia Brownell accepted. Sonia Brownell

The 20 th century's best chronicler of English culture George Orwell died in 1950. But Orwell's work continues to influence popular and political culture, and the term Orwellian — descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices — has entered the language together with several of his neologisms, including Cold War, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Big Brother and thought police.

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