Difference between revisions of "George Orwell"

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{{Short description|English author and journalist (1903–1950)}}
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[[Image:Hgdctuy6.jpg|right|thumb|George Orwell (Eric Blair)]]
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{{redirect|Orwell}}
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'''George Orwell''' is the pen name of '''Eric Arthur Blair''' (June 25, 1903 - January 21, 1950), a leading and [[Essay:Quantifying Openmindedness|open-minded]] [[English]] writer, essayist and journalist who became critical of his ideological allies on the [[Left]].  He hated [[imperialism]]<ref>"I went to Burma and joined the Indian Imperial Police. This was an armed police, a sort of gendarmerie very similar to the Spanish Guardia Civil or the Garde Mobile in France. I stayed five years in the service. It did not suit me and made me hate imperialism" [http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/articles/ukrainian-af-pref.htm]</ref> and grew more [[conservative]], adopting and raising a child and becoming a member of the [[Church of England]].<ref>"There are nevertheless four aspects of Orwell's later work which are more closely linked to conservative than to left-wing styles of thinking." [http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/document.html?id=1391]</ref> The tension between the increasingly conservative Orwell and the perception of him as a democratic socialist may account for some of his interesting word inventions like "doublethink".  Because of his prominent [[liberal]] past, Orwell's conservative writings were accepted and praised by the clueless liberal intelligentsia.  By the time Orwell adopted an infant in 1944, he was an outspoken opponent of [[abortion]],<ref>https://www.crisismagazine.com/2004/why-george-orwell-was-pro-life-2</ref> which may have accelerated his anti-[[communism|communist]] work.
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{{Use British English|date=February 2017}}
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{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}
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{{Infobox person
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| name              = George Orwell
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| image              = George Orwell press photo.jpg
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| alt                = Photograph of the head and shoulders of a middle-aged man, with black hair and a slim mustache
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| caption            = Orwell's [[press card]] portrait, 1943
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| birth_name        = Eric Arthur Blair
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| birth_date        = 25 June 1903
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| birth_place        = [[Motihari]], [[Bengal Presidency]], [[British Raj|British India]]
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| death_date        = {{death date and age|1950|1|21|1903|6|25|df=yes}}
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| death_place        = London, England
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| resting_place      = [[All Saints' Church, Sutton Courtenay|All Saints' Church]], [[Sutton Courtenay|Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire]], England
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| occupation        = [[Novelist]], [[essayist]], [[journalist]], [[literary critic]]
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| alma_mater        = [[Eton College]]
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| spouse            = {{ubl|{{marriage|[[Eileen O'Shaughnessy]]|1936|1945|end=died}}|{{marriage|[[Sonia Brownell]]|1949}}}}
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| children          = [[Richard Blair (patron)|Richard Blair]]
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| signature          = Orwell-Signature.svg
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| signature_alt      = Eric Blair ("George Orwell")
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| party              = [[Independent Labour Party]] (from 1938)
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| module            = {{infobox writer
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| embed        = yes
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| pseudonym    = George Orwell
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| years_active = 1928–1950
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| genre        = [[Dystopia]], ''[[roman à clef]]'', [[satire]]
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| subjects    = [[Anti-fascism]], [[anti-Stalinism]], [[anarchism]], [[democratic socialism]], [[literary criticism]], [[journalism]], and [[polemic]]
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}}
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}}
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'''Eric Arthur Blair''' (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), known by his [[pen name]] '''George Orwell''', was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bl.uk/people/george-orwell|title=George Orwell|website=The British Library|access-date=4 October 2019}}</ref> His work is characterised by lucid prose, biting [[social criticism]], total opposition to [[totalitarianism]], and outspoken support of [[democratic socialism]].<ref name=whyiwrite/><ref>{{cite book |title=Selected Writings |last=Orwell |first=George |editor1-first=George |editor1-last=Bott |year=1968 |orig-year=1958 |publisher=Heinemann |location=London |isbn=978-0435136758 |page=103 |quote=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. [italics in original]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Gale |first1=Steven H. |title=Encyclopedia of British Humorists: Geoffrey Chaucer to John Cleese, Volume 1 |date=1996 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |page=823}}</ref>
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Orwell produced [[literary criticism]] and [[poetry]], [[fiction]] and [[polemic]]al journalism. He is known for the [[Allegory|allegorical]] novella ''[[Animal Farm]]'' (1945) and the [[Utopian and dystopian fiction|dystopian]] novel ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' (1949). His non-fiction works, including ''[[The Road to Wigan Pier]]'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the north of England, and ''[[Homage to Catalonia]]'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the [[Republican faction (Spanish Civil War)|Republican]] faction of the [[Spanish Civil War]] (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his [[George Orwell bibliography|essays]] on [[politics]] and [[literature]], [[language]] and [[culture]]. In 2008, ''[[The Times]]'' ranked George Orwell second among "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/books/article2452094.ece|title=The 50 greatest British writers since 1945|date=5 January 2008|work=The Times |access-date=7 January 2014}}</ref>
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"Orwellian" is a term in tribute of his mockery of political attempts to control and redefine terminology.
  
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Orwell's work remains influential in [[popular culture]] and in [[political culture]], and the adjective "[[Orwellian]]"—<!--please do not change definition of "Orwellian" without first discussing on talk page-->describing [[Totalitarianism|totalitarian]] and [[Authoritarianism|authoritarian]] social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his [[neologism]]s, such as "[[Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)|Big Brother]]", "[[Thought Police]]", "[[Two Minutes Hate]]", "[[Room 101]]", "[[memory hole]]", "[[Newspeak]]", "[[doublethink]]", "[[wikt:unperson|unperson]]", and "[[thoughtcrime]]",<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/10/1984-george-orwell Robert McCrum], ''The Observer'', 10 May 2009</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.oed.com/search?f_0=Quotation+Author&scope=QUOTATION&fq_entry=true&q_0=G.+Orwell|title=Home : Oxford English Dictionary|website=www.oed.com|access-date=2 September 2017}}</ref> as well as providing direct inspiration for the neologism "[[groupthink]]".
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Unlike most writers, Orwell's greatest works came late in his life.  He harshly criticized [[communism]] and [[totalitarianism]] in ''[[1984]]'', his finest novel, as well as in his shorter fictional work ''[[Animal Farm]]'' (1946), an allegorical reference to the [[Russian Revolution]].  These works were far more significant than his first novel, based on his experiences on the Imperial Police Force in Burma, ''Burmese Dаys'', which explored the evils of coloniаlism. His highly influential essay, "Politics and the English Language," attacked the [[liberal obfuscation]] which was already present in his day, and championed clear speech.
  
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==Life==
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The inspiration for Orwell's growth into conservatism remains unexplored.  Likely reasons include his open-mindedness, his adopting and then raising (due to his wife's untimely death) a child, and his disillusionment with Leftists while fighting on their side in [[Spain]].
  
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===Early years===
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== Biography ==
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[[File:Birth-Place-George-Orwell-Motihari.jpg|260px|thumb|Orwell's birthplace in [[Motihari]], [[Bihar]], India.]]
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Orwell's political views began to move away from the [[far left]] when he volunteered to fight the Spanish [[Nationalist]] forces to keep them from overturning the [[Soviet]]-backed revolutionary socialist government of Spain<ref>"Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of state archives in Moscow, scholarship has considerably darkened the view of the Communist role in Republican Spain.... [The] Spanish government... was in no serious sense democratic.... [I]t was composed largely of revolutionary parties that showed no willingness to allow the right wing a political future in Spain, and it was extremely brutal in its treatment of clerics, landowners, and suspected Fascists.... [It] was probably headed toward Soviet-style totalitarianism before Franco ever launched his rebellion.... Stalin was among the Spanish government’s first arms suppliers of choice." George Packer, "[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/31/051031crbo_books#ixzz0mOubjsda The Spanish Prisoner]," ''The New Yorker'', October 31, 2005. Cf. Stanley G. Payne, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Mmfv1Z4Z18YC The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism]'' (Yale University Press, 2004) ISBN 030010068X</ref> in the [[Spаnish Civil War]] (1936-1939). He enlisted in the POUM (In English, Workers Party for Marxist Unity) Militia, and saw action on the Aragon front, where he fought side by side with Anаrchists and Communists, as well as Republican regulars.
  
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Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903 in [[Motihari]], [[Bengal Presidency|Bengal]], [[British Raj|British India]] into what he described as a "[[Middle class|lower-upper-middle class]]" family.<ref name="ODNB">{{Cite book |last=Crick |first=Bernard |author-link=Bernard Crick |title=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=Oxford, England, United Kingdom |year=2004 |chapter=Eric Arthur Blair [''pseud.'' George Orwell] (1903–1950)}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=The Road to Wigan Pier |page=1 |chapter=8 |date=February 1937 |last=Orwell |first=George |publisher=[[Left Book Club]]}}</ref> His great-grandfather, Charles Blair, was a wealthy [[Landed gentry|country gentleman]] and [[Absentee landlord|absentee owner]] of [[List of plantations in Jamaica|Jamaican plantations]] from [[Dorset]] who married Lady Mary Fane, daughter of the [[Thomas Fane, 8th Earl of Westmorland|8th Earl of Westmorland]].<ref name="Stansky">{{Cite book|first=Peter|last=Stansky|authorlink=Peter Stansky|first2=William|last2=Abrahams|title=The Unknown Orwell and Orwell: The Transformation|publisher=[[Stanford University Press]]|location=[[Stanford, California]]|year=1994|pages=[https://archive.org/details/unknownorwellorw00stan/page/5 5–12]|chapter=From Bengal to St Cyprian's|isbn=978-0804723428 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/unknownorwellorw00stan|url=https://archive.org/details/unknownorwellorw00stan/page/5}}</ref> His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was an [[Church of England|Anglican]] clergyman, and Orwell's father was Richard Walmesley Blair, who worked as a Sub-Deputy Opium Agent in the Opium Department of the [[Indian Civil Service]], overseeing the production and storage of [[opium]] for sale to [[Qing dynasty|China]].<ref name=Taylor>{{Cite book |last=Taylor |first=D.J. |title=Orwell: The Life |publisher=Henry Holt and Company |year=2003 |isbn=978-0805074734 |url=https://archive.org/details/orwelllife00tayl }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Chowdhury |first=Amlan |title=George Orwell’s Birthplace in Motihari to Turn Museum |url=https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/newsdetail/index/9/15774/george-orwells-birthplace-in-motihari-to-turn-museum |access-date=2022-02-26 |website=www.thecitizen.in |language=en-US}}</ref><ref name="BBC News">{{Cite news |last1=Haleem |first1=Suhail |date=11 August 2014 |title=The Indian Animal Farm where Orwell was born |newspaper=BBC News |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28739420}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2014-08-14 |title=ARENA NEWS WEEK: Frank Maloney, George Orwell Museum and Giant Panda Tian Tian |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/arena/entries/fb151770-ff16-39a5-b426-f0e7904fa31e |access-date=2022-02-26 |website=BBC |language=en}}</ref> His mother, Ida Mabel Blair (''née'' Limouzin), grew up in [[Moulmein]], [[Burma]], where her French father was involved in speculative ventures.<ref name="Stansky" /> Eric had two sisters: Marjorie, five years older; and Avril, five years younger. When Eric was one year old, his mother took him and Marjorie to England.<ref name="crick48">Crick (1982), p. 48</ref>{{refn|Stansky and Abrahams suggested that Ida Blair moved to England in 1907, based on information given by her daughter Avril, talking about a time before she was born. This is contrasted by Ida Blair's 1905, as well as a photograph of Eric, aged three, in an English suburban garden.<ref name=crick48/> The earlier date coincides with a difficult posting for Blair senior, and the need to start their daughter Marjorie (then six years old) in an English education.|group= n}} In 2014 restoration work began on Orwell's birthplace and ancestral house in Motihari.<ref>{{cite web|title=Renovation of British Author George Orwell's house in Motihari begins|url=http://news.biharprabha.com/2014/06/renovation-of-british-author-george-orwells-house-in-motihari-begins/|work=IANS|publisher=news.biharprabha.com|access-date=26 June 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140629044724/http://news.biharprabha.com/2014/06/renovation-of-british-author-george-orwells-house-in-motihari-begins/|archive-date=29 June 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref>
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He became disillusioned with the Spanish government's policy of withholding arms from the POUM and the Anarchists, which he saw as an attempt by the Communists to water down the revolutionary nature of the Anti-Fascist resistance, and centralize power in the hands of the Moscow-backed Communist Party. Taking a bullet through his neck but surviving, Orwell was invalided to Barcelona, where he witnessed the [[Stalin]]ist repression of [[Trotsky]]ist and [[Anarchist]] parties. Orwell and his wife were forced to escape from Spain as fugitives, after the POUM was banned by the increasingly repressive regime.  
  
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[[File:ShiplakeBlairHome01.JPG|alt=|thumb|left|Blair family home at [[Shiplake]], Oxfordshire]]
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Despite his persecution, Orwell initially continued to support the Republic upon his return to England, viewing a Communist-dominated Spain as better than a Nationalist Spain. He recounted his experiences in Spain in the book ''Homage to Catalonia''.<ref>[http://www.george-orwell.org/Homage_to_Catalonia/index.html]</ref> He remained a socialist, and was for a time in the late 1930s a member of the Independent Labour Party, although he split from the ILP over its opposition to [[World War II]]. Orwell served in the Home Guаrd during the war.
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In 1904, Ida Blair settled with her children at [[Henley-on-Thames]] in Oxfordshire. Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters and, apart from a brief visit in mid-1907,<ref>A Kind of Compulsion 1903–36, xviii</ref> he did not see his father until 1912.<ref name=Taylor/> Aged five, Eric was sent as a day-boy to a [[Teaching order|convent school]] in Henley-on-Thames, which Marjorie also attended. It was a Roman Catholic [[convent]] run by French [[Ursulines|Ursuline]] nuns.<ref>{{Cite journal |first=Gordon |last=Bowker |title=George Orwell |page=21}}</ref> His mother wanted him to have a [[Public school (United Kingdom)|public school]] education, but his family could not afford the fees. Through the social connections of Ida Blair's brother Charles Limouzin, Blair gained a scholarship to [[St Cyprian's School]], [[Eastbourne]], East Sussex.<ref name=Taylor/> Arriving in September 1911, he boarded at the school for the next five years, returning home only for school holidays. Although he knew nothing of the reduced fees, he "soon recognised that he was from a poorer home".<ref>Bowker p. 30</ref> Blair hated the school<ref>{{Cite book |first=Alaric |last=Jacob |author-link=Alaric Jacob |chapter=Sharing Orwell's Joys, but not his Fears |editor-first=Christopher |editor-last=Norris |title=Inside the Myth |publisher=Lawrence and Wishart |year=1984}}</ref> and many years later wrote an essay "[[Such, Such Were the Joys]]", published posthumously, based on his time there. At St Cyprian's, Blair first met [[Cyril Connolly]], who became a writer and who, as the editor of ''[[Horizon (magazine)|Horizon]]'', published several of Orwell's essays.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Literature in English |date=1996 |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=517}}</ref>
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Before the First World War, the family moved to [[Shiplake]], Oxfordshire, where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughter [[Jacintha Buddicom|Jacintha]]. When they first met, he was standing on his head in a field. Asked why, he said, "You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up."<ref name="autogenerated1">{{Cite book |first=Jacintha |last=Buddicom |author-link=Jacintha Buddicom |title=Eric and Us |publisher=Frewin |year=1974 |isbn=978-0856320767 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/ericusremembranc0000budd }}</ref> Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry, and dreamed of becoming famous writers. He said that he might write a book in the style of [[H. G. Wells]]'s ''[[A Modern Utopia]]''. During this period, he also enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacintha's brother and sister.<ref name="autogenerated1"/>
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In 1941, Orwell wrote his essay ''The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius'', in which he summarized Britain's wartime situation, and expressed his political opinions. He called for a particularly English form of socialism, which would democratically replace the capitalist model and create a fairer society, while being informed by the most attractive English characteristics, such as love of privacy and law abidance.
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[[File:StCyprians.JPG|alt=|thumb|Blair's time at St. Cyprian inspired his essay "[[Such, Such Were the Joys]]".]]
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While at St Cyprian's, Blair wrote two poems that were published in the ''[[Henley Standard|Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard]]''.<ref>{{Cite journal |title=Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard |date=2 October 1914}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |title=Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard |date=21 July 1916}}</ref> 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 College, Berkshire|Wellington]] and [[Eton College|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.<ref name=Taylor/>
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Orwell had only ten years left in his life when he returned. During that period he and his wife adopted a baby boy (in 1944), but Orwell's wife unexpectedly died shortly thereafter.
  
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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]] 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", Orwell told his childhood friend Jacintha Buddicom, but he said he was "interested and happy" at Eton.<ref>Jacintha Buddicom, ''Eric and Us'', p. 58</ref> His principal tutor was [[A. S. F. Gow]], Fellow of [[Trinity College, Cambridge]], who also gave him advice later in his career.<ref name=Taylor/> Blair was briefly taught French by [[Aldous Huxley]]. [[Steven Runciman]], who was at Eton with Blair, noted that he and his contemporaries appreciated Huxley's linguistic flair.<ref name=Wadhams/> Cyril Connolly followed Blair to Eton, but because they were in separate years, they did not associate with each other.<ref name=Connolly/>
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In those ten years Orwell wrote his famous [[anti-Communist]] fictional works, demonstrating how much his views had moved to the right from his youth. First he spent three years writing ''Animаl Farm'' (1944), and then perhaps five years on the longer novel ''1984'' (1949). Orwell continued to espouse forms of [[socialism]]<ref>[http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/eaip_03]</ref> right up to his death, but utilized his position as a regular columnist for the left-labor ''Tribune'' paper to strongly criticize the USSR.  Such criticism was unusual for a [[left-wing]]er of the period, but Orwell was so well respected that his position was secure. "I belong to the left and must work with it," he declared in 1945.<ref>http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/document.html?id=1391</ref> He died of [[tuberculosis]] in 1950.
  
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Blair's academic performance reports suggest that he neglected his academic studies,<ref name=Wadhams/> but during his time at Eton he worked with [[R. A. B. Mynors|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 [[Eastern world|East]],<ref name=Wadhams>{{Cite journal |first=Stephen |last=Wadhams |title=Remembering Orwell |publisher=Penguin |year=1984}}</ref> 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]], Suffolk, the first of their four homes in the town.<ref name=Binns>{{Cite book |last=Binns|first=Ronald |title=Orwell in Southwold |publisher=Zoilus Press |year=2018 |isbn=978-1999735920}}</ref> Blair was enrolled at a [[crammer]] 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.<ref name=Taylor/><ref>''A Kind of Compulsion'', p. 87, gives Blair as 7th of ''29'' successful candidates, and 21st of the 23 successful candidates who passed the Indian Imperial Police riding test, in September 1922.</ref>
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==Quotes==
  
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===Policing in Burma===
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*"In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
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[[File:OrwellBurmaPassport.jpg|alt=|thumb|upright|Blair pictured in a passport photo in Burma. This was the last time he had a [[toothbrush moustache]]; he would later acquire a [[pencil moustache]] similar to other British officers stationed in Burma.]]
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Blair's maternal grandmother lived at [[Mawlamyaing|Moulmein]], so he chose a posting in [[British rule in Burma|Burma]], 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,<ref>{{cite book|page=514|title=The India Office and Burma Office List: 1927|publisher=Harrison & Sons, Ltd.|year=1927}}</ref> with effect from 27 November and at the pay of [[Indian rupee|Rs.]] 525 per month.<ref>{{cite book|page=399|title=The Combined Civil List for India: January 1923|publisher=The Pioneer Press|year=1923}}</ref> After a short posting at [[Maymyo]], Burma's principal [[hill station]], he was posted to the frontier outpost of [[Myaungmya]] in the [[Irrawaddy Delta]] at the beginning of 1924.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Unknown Orwell: Orwell, the Transformation |date=1994 |publisher=Stanford University Press |page=176}}</ref>
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*"For the future. For the unborn."
  
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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 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".<ref>Stansky & Abrahams, ''The Unknown Orwell'', pp. 170–71</ref> In September 1925 he went to [[Insein Township|Insein]], the home of [[Insein Prison]], 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".<ref name=Shelden>Michael Shelden ''Orwell: The Authorised Biography'', William Heinemann, 1991</ref> By this time, Blair had completed his training and was receiving a monthly salary of Rs. 740, including allowances.<ref>{{cite book|page=409|title=The Combined Civil List for India: July–September 1925|publisher=The Pioneer Press|year=1925}}</ref>
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*"Truth is treason in an empire of lies."
  
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[[File:KatharBritishClub.JPG|left|thumb|British Club in [[Katha, Myanmar]] ]]
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*"In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia."<ref>http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm</ref>
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In Burma, Blair acquired a reputation as an outsider. He spent much of his time alone, reading or pursuing non-''[[Pukka sahib|pukka]]'' activities, such as attending the churches of the [[Karen people|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'."<ref>''A Kind of Compulsion, 1903–36'', p. 87</ref> Blair made changes to his appearance in Burma that remained for the rest of his life, including adopting a [[pencil moustache]]. [[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. [He] also 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."<ref>[[Emma Larkin]], Introduction, ''Burmese Days'', Penguin Classics edition, 2009</ref>
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In April 1926 he moved to Moulmein, where his maternal grandmother lived. At the end of that year, he was assigned to [[Katha, Myanmar|Katha]] in [[Upper Burma]], where he contracted [[dengue fever]] in 1927. Entitled to a [[leave (military)|leave]] 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]] 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.<ref>{{cite book|page=894|title=The India Office and Burma Office List: 1929|publisher=Harrison & Sons, Ltd.|year=1929}}</ref> He drew on his experiences in the Burma police for the novel ''[[Burmese Days]]'' (1934) and the essays "[[A Hanging]]" (1931) and "[[Shooting an Elephant]]" (1936).<ref>{{cite news |title=Exploring Burma Through George Orwell |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4761169&t=1610634531933 |access-date=14 January 2021 |agency=NPR}}</ref>
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*In [[England]] of the last thirty years, it has seemed all too natural [unfortunately] ... that [[abortion]], theoretically illegal, should be looked upon as a mere peccadillo.”<ref>From Orwell's essay ''The English People'' (1944).</ref>
  
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===London and Paris===
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*“All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.”
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[[File:George_Orwell's_Home,_Notting_Hill,_London.jpg|thumb|The blue house on the right was Blair's 1927 lodgings in [[Portobello Road]], London]]
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In England, he settled back in the family home at [[Southwold]], renewing acquaintance with local friends and attending an [[Old Etonian]] dinner. He visited his old tutor Gow at Cambridge for advice on becoming a writer.<ref>Crick (1982), p. 122</ref> In 1927 he moved to London.<ref>Stansky & Abrahams, ''The Unknown Orwell'', p. 195</ref> [[Ruth Pitter]], a family acquaintance, helped him find lodgings, and by the end of 1927 he had moved into rooms in [[Portobello Road]];<ref>Ruth Pitter ''BBC Overseas Service broadcast'', 3 January 1956</ref> a [[blue plaque]] commemorates his residence there.<ref>{{openplaque|2825}}</ref> 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.<ref>Stansky & Abrahams, ''The Unknown Orwell'', p. 204</ref>
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In imitation of [[Jack London]], whose writing he admired (particularly ''[[The People of the Abyss]]''), 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]], adopting the name P.S. Burton and making no concessions to middle-class ''[[etiquette|mores]]'' and expectations; he recorded his experiences of the low life for use in "[[The Spike (essay)|The Spike]]", his first published essay in English, and in the second half of his first book, ''[[Down and Out in Paris and London]]'' (1933).<ref>{{cite news |title=Orwell's take on destitution, live from Paris and London |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/28/george-orwell-down-out-london-paris-live-performance|access-date=16 November 2021 |work=The Guardian}}</ref>
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*“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”<ref>George Orwell in ''1984''</ref>
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[[File:Rue du Pot-de-Fer.JPG|left|thumb|upright|Rue du Pot de Fer on the [[Rive Gauche (Paris)|Left Bank]] in the [[5th arrondissement of Paris|5th arrondissement]], where Blair lived in Paris]]
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In early 1928 he moved to Paris. He lived in the rue du Pot de Fer, a working class district in the [[5th arrondissement of Paris|5th Arrondissement]].<ref name=Taylor/> 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.<ref name=Taylor/> He was more successful as a journalist and published articles in ''[[Monde (review)|Monde]]'', a political/literary journal edited by [[Henri Barbusse]] (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;<ref>''A Kind of Compulsion'' (1903–36), p. 113</ref> and ''Le Progrès Civique'' (founded by the left-wing coalition [[Cartel des Gauches|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]]''."<ref>Stansky & Abrahams, ''The Unknown Orwell'', p. 216</ref>
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*"It cannot be said too often&mdash; at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough&mdash; that [[collectivism]] is not inherently [[democratic]], but, on the contrary, gives to a [[tyranny|tyrannical]] minority such powers as the [[Spanish Inquisition|Spanish Inquisitors]] never dreamt of."<ref>George Orwell, "Review, ''The Road to Serfdom'' by F. A. Hayek," The London ''Observer'', April 9, 1944, reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=fCRLPIbLP8IC The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 3: As I Please, 1943-1945]'' (London: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000) ISBN 1567921353, p. 118</ref>
  
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He fell seriously ill in February 1929 and was taken to the [[Hôpital Cochin]] in the [[14th arrondissement of Paris|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]], which he later described in ''Down and Out in Paris and London''. In August 1929, he sent a copy of "[[The Spike (essay)|The Spike]]" to [[John Middleton Murry]]'s ''[[Adelphi (magazine)|New Adelphi]]'' magazine in London. The magazine was edited by [[Max Plowman]] and [[Sir Richard Rees, 2nd Baronet|Sir Richard Rees]], and Plowman accepted the work for publication.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Marks |first1=Peter |title=George Orwell the Essayist: Literature, Politics and the Periodical Culture |date=2015 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |page=28}}</ref>
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*"To this day it gives me a faint feeling of sacrilege not to stand to attention during ‘God save the King’. That is childish, of course, but I would sooner have had that kind of upbringing than be like the [[left-wing]] intellectuals who are so ‘enlightened’ that they cannot understand the most ordinary emotions."<ref>George Orwell, "My Country, Right or Left," ''New Folios of Writing'', Autumn 1940, reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), [https://books.google.com/books?id=0j2qODEJkdoC ''The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 1: An age like this, 1920-1940]'' (London: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000) ISBN 1567921337, p. 540</ref>
  
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===Southwold===
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*"It is all very well to be 'advanced' and 'enlightened,' to snigger at Colonel Blimp and proclaim your emancipation from all traditional loyalties, but a time comes when the sand of the desert is sodden red and what have I done for thee, England, my England? As I was brought up in this tradition myself I can recognise it under strange disguises, and also sympathise with it, for even at its stupidest and most sentimental it is a comelier thing than the shallow self-righteousness of the left-wing intelligentsia."<ref>George Orwell, "The Limit to Pessimism," ''New English Weekly'', April 25, 1940, reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), [https://books.google.com/books?id=0j2qODEJkdoC ''The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 1: An age like this, 1920-1940]'' (London: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000) ISBN 1567921337, p. 535</ref>
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[[File:Southwold North Parade.jpg|right|thumb|[[Southwold]]&nbsp;– North Parade]]
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In December 1929 after nearly two years in Paris, Blair returned to England and went directly to his parents' house in [[Southwold]], 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 [[Saint Felix School|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.<ref name=Taylor/>
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*"One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words '[[Socialism]]' and '[[Communism]]' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, [[pacifist]] and [[feminist]] in England."<ref>George Orwell, ''[http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1259.pdf The Road to Wigan Pier]'' (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), p. 115</ref>
  
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In early 1930 he stayed briefly in [[Bramley, Leeds]], 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 Stanley Peters|Richard Peters]], later became a distinguished academic.<ref>R.S. Peters (1974). ''A Boy's View of George Orwell'' Psychology and Ethical Development. Allen & Unwin</ref> "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."<ref>Stansky & Abrahams, p. 230 ''The Unknown Orwell''</ref> 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 crown (British coin)|half a crown]] (two shillings and sixpence, or one-eighth of a pound) a day.<ref name="autogenerated1996">Stella Judt "I once met George Orwell" in ''I once Met'' 1996</ref>
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*"The truth is that to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we,' the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them,' the Lower Orders."<ref>George Orwell, ''[http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1259.pdf The Road to Wigan Pier]'' (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), p. 119</ref>
  
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Blair now contributed regularly to ''Adelphi'', with "[[A Hanging]]" 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 [[Hops|hop]] fields. He kept a diary about his experiences there. Afterwards, he lodged in the [[Tooley Street#George Orwell|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]]'', whose editorial staff included his old friend Cyril Connolly. Mabel Fierz put him in contact with [[Leonard Moore (literary agent)|Leonard Moore]], who became his [[literary agent]] in April 1932.<ref>{{cite book |title=George Orwell: A Life in Letters |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/George_Orwell_A_Life_in_Letters/_WE4AAAAQBAJ |editor=Peter Davison |date=2013 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |page=494|isbn=9780871404626 }}</ref>
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*"[T]he intellectual, book-trained Socialist... is drawn... entirely from... a rootless town-bred section of the middle class.... [I]t includes&mdash;so much so that to an outsider it even appears to be composed of&mdash;... the foaming denouncers of the bourgeoisie, and the more-water-in-your-beer reformers of whom [[George Bernard Shaw|Shaw]] is the prototype, and the astute young social-literary climbers who are Communists now, as they will be Fascists five years hence, because it is all the go, and all that dreary tribe of highminded women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come flocking towards the smell of 'progress' like bluebottles to a dead cat."<ref>George Orwell, ''[http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1259.pdf The Road to Wigan Pier]'' (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), p. 121</ref>
  
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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,<ref name="Arrest">{{cite web|url=http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1214/041214-orwell-court-record|title=Discovery of 'drunk and incapable' arrest record shows Orwell's 'honesty'|work=ucl.ac.uk|access-date=25 February 2015|date=4 December 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150106070123/http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1214/041214-orwell-court-record/|archive-date=6 January 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref> so that he could experience Christmas in prison, but after he was picked up and taken to [[Bethnal Green]] 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.<ref name="Arrest"/>
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*"If only the sandals and pistachio-colored shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, [[teetotalism|teetotaler]] and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly. As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."<ref>George Orwell, ''[http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1259.pdf The Road to Wigan Pier]'' (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), p. 147</ref>
  
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===Teaching career===
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*"The word ''[[Fascism]]'' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable'.... Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism?"<ref>George Orwell, "[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm Politics and the English Language]," ''Horizon'', vol. 13, issue 76 (April 1946), reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), [https://books.google.com/books?id=0j2qODEJkdoC ''The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 4: In Front of Your Nose, 1946-1950]'' (London: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000) ISBN 1567921337, pp. 132-139</ref>
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<!-- Courtesy note: [[P. S. Burton]] links here. as {{R to section}} -->
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In April 1932 Blair became a teacher at The Hawthorns High School, a school for boys, in [[Hayes, Hillingdon|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.<ref>Crick (1982), p. 221</ref> 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]] was prepared to publish ''A Scullion's Diary'' for a £40 advance, through his recently founded publishing house, [[Victor Gollancz Ltd]], which was an outlet for radical and socialist works.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Wagner|first=David Paul|date=2019|title=Left Book Club|url=https://www.publishinghistory.com/left-book-club-victor-gollancz.html|url-status=live|website=Publishing History}}</ref>
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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''.<ref>Avril Dunn ''My Brother George Orwell'' Twentieth Century 1961</ref> 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.[[File:River Orwell Shore - geograph.org.uk - 1044570.jpg|thumb|The pen name George Orwell was inspired by the [[River Orwell]] in the English county of Suffolk.<ref>Voorhees (1986: 11)</ref> ]]
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*"[T]here is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of [[Western]] [[democracy]] and admiration for [[totalitarianism]]. Pacifist [[propaganda]] usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against [[Britain]] and the [[United States]]."<ref>George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism," ''Polemic'', October 1945, reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=fCRLPIbLP8IC The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 3: As I Please, 1943-1945]'' (London: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000) ISBN 1567921353, p. 374</ref>
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"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".<ref name="nybooks">{{cite magazine |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/may/26/intimate-orwell/?pagination=false |title=The Intimate Orwell |last=Leys |first=Simon |date=6 May 2011 |access-date=6 May 2011 |magazine=[[The New York Review of Books]]}}</ref> 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.<ref>Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds.)''Orwell: An Age Like This'', letters 31 and 33 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World)</ref> He finally adopted the ''[[nom de plume]]'' George Orwell because "It is a good round English name."<ref>{{cite news|title=George Orwell: from Animal Farm to Zog, an A–Z of Orwell|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/5386673/George-Orwell-from-Animal-Farm-to-Zog-an-A-Z-of-Orwell.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220110/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/5386673/George-Orwell-from-Animal-Farm-to-Zog-an-A-Z-of-Orwell.html |archive-date=10 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|agency=The Telegraph|date=20 March 2018}}{{cbignore}}</ref> The name George was inspired by the [[Saint George|patron saint of England]], and Orwell after the [[River Orwell]] in Suffolk which was one of Orwell's favourite locations.<ref name="Down"/>
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''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]]'' comparing Orwell's eccentric characters to the [[Charles Dickens#Characters|characters of Dickens]].<ref name="Down">{{cite book |last1=Brunsdale |first1=Mitzi |title=Student Companion to George Orwell |date=2000 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |pages=48–49, 64}}</ref> ''Down and Out'' was modestly successful and was next published by [[Harper (publisher)|Harper & Brothers]] in New York.<ref name="Down"/>
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*"Fifteen years ago, when one defended the freedom of the intellect, one had to defend it against [[Conservative]]s, against [[Catholic]]s, and to some extent&mdash;for they were not of great importance in England&mdash;against  Fascists. Today one has to defend it against [[Communist]]s and ‘fellow travellers’"<ref>George Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature," ''Polemic'', No. 2 (January 1946), reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=zaxG_3ivhVAC The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 4: In Front of Your Nose, 1946-1950]'' (London: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000) ISBN 1567921361, p. 62</ref>
  
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In mid-1933 Blair left Hawthorns to become a teacher at [[Frays River|Frays College]], in [[Uxbridge]], 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]] 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.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Applegate |first1=Edd |title=Advocacy Journalists: A Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors |date=2009 |publisher=Scarecrow Press |page=151}}</ref>
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*"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."
  
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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 [[allotment (gardening)|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.<ref name="Down"/>
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*"The [[nationalist]] not only does not disapprove of [[mass murder|atrocities]] committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
  
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===Hampstead===
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*"Every line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, ''against'' [[totalitarianism]] and ''for'' [[democratic socialism]], as I understand it."<ref>Huneke, Samuel (February 16, 2016). [http://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2016/02/16/pr-orwell-alex-woloch-021516/ Stanford professor uncovers roots of George Orwell's political language]. ''Stanford''. Retrieved June 25, 2017.</ref>
  
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*"Up to 1930 I did not on the whole look upon myself as a Socialist. In fact I had as yet no clearly defined political views. I became pro-Socialist more out of disgust with the way the poorer section of the industrial workers were oppressed and neglected than out of any theoretical admiration for a planned society."<ref>http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/articles/ukrainian-af-pref.htm</ref>
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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]]'' (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]], 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.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Cambridge Introduction to George Orwell |date=2012 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=16}}</ref>
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*"I have no particular love for the idealized 'worker' as he appears in the [[bourgeois]] Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the [[police]]man, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on."
  
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[[File:GEORGE ORWELL 1903-1950 Novelist and Political Essayist lived here.jpg|thumb|upright|[[English Heritage]] [[blue plaque]] in [[Kentish Town]], London where Orwell lived from August 1935 until January 1936.]]
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*"If [[liberty]] means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
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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]], when his landlady, Rosalind Obermeyer, who was studying for a master's degree in psychology at [[University College London]], invited some of her fellow students to a party. One of these students, Elizaveta Fen, a biographer and future translator of [[Chekhov]], recalled Blair and his friend [[Richard Rees]] "draped" at the fireplace, looking, she thought, "moth-eaten and prematurely aged."<ref>Stansky & Abrahams, ''Orwell:The Transformation'' pp.&nbsp;100–01</ref> Around this time, Blair had started to write reviews for ''[[The New English Weekly]]''.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Cambridge Introduction to George Orwell |date=2012 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=17}}</ref>
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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]], 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.<ref>A Kind of Compulsion, p. 392</ref> Blair was now working on ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying'', and also tried unsuccessfully to write a serial for the ''[[News Chronicle]]''. 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]] honoured Orwell with a [[blue plaque]] at his Kentish Town residence.<ref>{{cite news |title=George Orwell's Blue Plaque in Kentish Town, London NW5 |url=https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/george-orwell/ |access-date=27 February 2021 |agency=English Heritage}}</ref>
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===''The Road to Wigan Pier''===
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{{main|The Road to Wigan Pier}}
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At this time, Victor Gollancz suggested Orwell spend a short time investigating social conditions in economically depressed [[Northern England]].{{refn|The conventional view, based on Geoffrey Gorer's recollections, is of a specific commission with a £500 advance. Taylor argues that Orwell's subsequent life does not suggest he received such a large advance, Gollancz was not known to pay large sums to relatively unknown authors, and Gollancz took little proprietorial interest in progress.<ref>D. J. Taylor ''Orwell: The Life'' Chatto & Windus 2003</ref>|group= n}} Two years earlier, [[J. B. Priestley]] had written about England north of the [[River Trent|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 (author)|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]] rather than Rochdale, "for there are the colliers and they're good stuff."<ref>Clarke, Ben. "George Orwell, Jack Hilton, and the Working Class." ''Review of English Studies'' 67.281 (2016) 764–85.</ref>
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On 31 January 1936, Orwell set out by public transport and on foot, reaching [[Manchester]] via [[Coventry]], Stafford, the [[Staffordshire Potteries|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 [[Wigan]], where Orwell spent February staying in dirty lodgings over a [[tripe]] 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 Colliery|Bryn Hall coal mine]], and used the [[Museum of Wigan Life|local public library]] to consult public health records and reports on working conditions in mines.<ref>{{citation|url = http://orwellstracks.webklik.nl/page/wigan|title = Orwells tracks|accessdate = 16 November 2021|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20131203020355/http://orwellstracks.webklik.nl/page/wigan|archive-date = 3 December 2013|url-status = dead}}</ref>
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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]] and during March, stayed in south Yorkshire, spending time in [[Sheffield]] and [[Barnsley]]. As well as visiting mines, including [[Grimethorpe]], and observing social conditions, he attended meetings of the Communist Party and of [[Oswald Mosley]] ("his speech the usual claptrap—The blame for everything was put upon mysterious international gangs of Jews") where he saw the tactics of the [[British Union of Fascists|Blackshirts]] ("...one is liable to get both a hammering and a fine for asking a question which Mosley finds it difficult to answer.").<ref>A Kind of Compulsion, p. 457</ref> He also made visits to his sister at [[Headingley]], during which he visited the [[Brontë Parsonage Museum|Brontë Parsonage]] at [[Haworth]], where he was "chiefly impressed by a pair of [[Charlotte Brontë]]'s cloth-topped boots, very small, with square toes and lacing up at the sides."<ref>A Kind of Compulsion, p. 450. The Road to Wigan Pier Diary</ref>
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[[File:Wigan Pier - geograph.org.uk - 4175.jpg|alt=|thumb|A former warehouse at [[Wigan Pier]] is named after Orwell.]]
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[[File:No 2 Kits Lane, Wallington 2020-07-18.jpg|alt=|thumb|No 2 Kits Lane, [[Wallington, Hertfordshire]], Orwell's residence c. 1936–1940]]
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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]] 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.<ref>A Kind of Compulsion, p. 468</ref> He started work on ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' by the end of April, but also spent hours working on the garden and testing 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, Essex|Langham]], entitled ''An Outsider Sees the Distressed Areas''; others who spoke at the school included [[John Strachey (politician)|John Strachey]], [[Max Plowman]], [[Karl Polanyi]] and [[Reinhold Niebuhr]].<ref>Peter Davison (editor), ''George Orwell: A Kind of Compulsion 1903–1936'' (1998), p. 493.</ref>
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The result of his journeys through the north was ''[[The Road to Wigan Pier]]'', published by Gollancz for the [[Left Book Club]] in 1937.<ref>Orwell, ''Facing Unpleasant Facts'', [[Secker & Warburg]] (new edition 2000), p. 12</ref> The first half of the book documents his social investigations of [[Lancashire]] and [[Yorkshire]], 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.<ref>[[Ruth Dudley Edwards]], ''Victor Gollancz, a Biography'', pp. 246–247; quoted in ''A Kind of Compulsion: 1903 – 1936 (The Complete Works of George Orwell)'', p. 532.</ref>
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Orwell's research for ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' led to him being placed under surveillance by the [[Special Branch (Metropolitan Police)|Special Branch]] from 1936, for 12 years, until one year before the publication of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PageNotFound/PageNotFound.aspx?url=http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2005/highlights_july/july19/default.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111208064406/http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2005/highlights_july/july19/default.htm |url-status=dead |title=George Orwell under the watchful eye of Big Brother - The National Archives|archive-date=8 December 2011|website=www.nationalarchives.gov.uk}}</ref>
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Orwell married [[Eileen O'Shaughnessy]] 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]], [[Italy under fascism|Fascist Italy]] and local groups such as [[Falange]]), Orwell decided to go to Spain to take part in the [[Spanish Civil War]] on [[Second Spanish Republic|the Republican side]]. Under the erroneous impression that he needed papers from some left-wing organisation to cross the frontier, on [[John Strachey (politician)|John Strachey]]'s recommendation he applied unsuccessfully to [[Harry Pollitt]], leader of the [[British Communist Party]]. Pollitt was suspicious of Orwell's political reliability; he asked him whether he would undertake to join the [[International Brigade]] and advised him to get a safe-conduct from the Spanish Embassy in Paris.<ref>"Notes on the Spanish Militias" in Orwell in Spain, p. 278</ref> 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 (UK politician)|John McNair]] in Barcelona.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ingle |first1=Stephen |title=George Orwell: A Political Life |date=1993 |publisher=Manchester University Press |page=41}}</ref>
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===Spanish Civil War===
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[[File:Placa_de_George_Orwell_in_Barcelona_3.jpg|thumb|right|The square in Barcelona renamed in Orwell's honour]]
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Orwell set out for Spain on about 23 December 1936, dining with [[Henry Miller]] 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".<ref>Haycock, ''I Am Spain'' (2013), 152</ref> A few days later in [[Barcelona]], Orwell met John McNair of the [[Independent Labour Party]] (ILP) Office who quoted him: "I've come to fight against Fascism",<ref>John McNair – Interview with Ian Angus UCL 1964</ref> but if someone had asked him what he was fighting ''for'', "I should have answered: 'Common decency'".<ref name="catalonia">{{Cite book |last=Orwell |first=George |title=Homage to Catalonia |publisher=Penguin Books |year=2013 |page=197 |isbn=978-0-141-39302-5 }}</ref> Orwell stepped into a complex political situation in [[Catalonia]]. The [[Second Spanish Republic|Republican government]] was supported by a number of factions with conflicting aims, including the [[Workers' Party of Marxist Unification]] (POUM&nbsp;– Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista), the [[anarcho-syndicalist]] [[Confederación Nacional del Trabajo]] (CNT) and the [[Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia]] (a wing of the [[Communist Party of Spain (main)|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".<ref name="catalonia"/> The ILP was linked to the POUM so Orwell joined the POUM.
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After a time at the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona he was sent to the relatively quiet [[Aragon]] Front under [[Georges Kopp]]. By January 1937 he was at [[Alcubierre]] {{convert|1500|ft|m}} 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.<ref>See article by [[Iain King]] on Orwell's war experiences, [http://www.military-history.org/articles/thinkers-at-war-george-orwell.htm here.]</ref> 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 [[Sierra de Alcubierre|Monte Oscuro]]. The newly arrived ILP contingent included Bob Smillie, [[Robert Edwards (politician)|Bob Edwards]], Stafford Cottman and Jack Branthwaite. The unit was then sent on to [[Huesca]].
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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.<ref>Letter to Eileen Blair April 1937 in ''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 1&nbsp;– An Age Like This 1945–1950'' p. 296 (Penguin)</ref> Orwell had to spend some days in hospital with a poisoned hand<ref name="nytimes.com">{{cite news|last1=Hicks|first1=Granville|title=George Orwell's Prelude in Spain|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/16/specials/orwell-homage.html|website=New York Times|date=18 May 1952}}</ref> 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.
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In April, Orwell returned to Barcelona.<ref name="nytimes.com"/> 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."<ref>Bowker, p. 216</ref> 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,<ref>"The accusation of espionage against the P.O.U.M. rested solely upon articles in the Communist press and the activities of the Communist-controlled secret police." ''Homage to Catalonia'' p. 168. Penguin, 1980</ref> 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.<ref name="newsinger">{{cite web|url=http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj62/newsinger.htm |title=Newsinger, John "Orwell and the Spanish Revolution" ''International Socialism Journal'' Issue 62 Spring 1994 |publisher=Pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk |access-date=21 October 2010}}</ref> "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."<ref>Bowker, quoting Orwell in Homage To Catalonia, p. 219</ref>
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After his return to the front, he was wounded in the throat by a sniper's bullet. At 6&nbsp;ft 2 in (1.88 m), Orwell was considerably taller than the Spanish fighters<ref>{{Cite journal|url=http://www.hoover.org/research/man-who-saved-orwell|title=Harry Milton&nbsp;– The Man Who Saved Orwell|publisher=[[Hoover Institution]]|access-date=23 December 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150620092650/http://www.hoover.org/research/man-who-saved-orwell|archive-date=20 June 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref> 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]] arrived at the hospital in [[Lleida]]. He recovered sufficiently to get up and on 27 May 1937 was sent on to [[Tarragona]] 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]] treatment and was declared medically unfit for service.<ref>Taylor (2003: 228–29))</ref>
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By the middle of June the political situation in Barcelona had deteriorated and the POUM—painted by the pro-Soviet Communists as a [[Trotskyist]] 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."<ref>Gordon Bowker, Orwell, p. 218 {{ISBN|978-0349115511}}</ref> Members, including Kopp, were arrested and others were in hiding. Orwell and his wife were under threat and had to lie low,{{refn|The author states that evidence discovered at the National Historical Archives in Madrid in 1989 of a security police report to the Tribunal for Espionage and High Treason described Eric Blair and his wife Eileen Blair, as "known Trotskyists" and as "linking agents of the ILP and the POUM". Newsinger goes on to state that given Orwell's precarious health, "there can be little doubt that if he had been arrested he would have died in prison."|group= n}} although they broke cover to try to help Kopp.
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Finally with their passports in order, they escaped from Spain by train, diverting to [[Banyuls-sur-Mer]] 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]], charging the Orwells with "rabid [[Trotskyism]]", and being agents of the [[POUM]].<ref>Facing Unpleasant Facts, p. xxix, Secker & Warburg, 2000</ref> 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 [[Moscow trials|Russian Trotskyist trials]] and from the start every kind of lie, including flagrant absurdities, has been circulated in the Communist press."<ref>Facing Unpleasant Facts, pp. 31, 224</ref> Orwell's experiences in the Spanish Civil War gave rise to ''[[Homage to Catalonia]]'' (1938).
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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".<ref>{{Cite web|date=11 October 2020|title=Revealed: Soviet spies targeted George Orwell during Spanish civil war|url=http://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/11/revealed-soviet-spies-targeted-george-orwell-during-spanish-civil-war|access-date=12 October 2020|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref>
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===Rest and recuperation===
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[[File:24 Crooms Hill, Greenwich, London-11July2010.jpg|thumb|Laurence O'Shaughnessy's former home, the large house on the corner, 24 Crooms Hill, [[Greenwich]], London<ref>{{cite web|url=http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/about-orwell/gordon-bowker-orwells-london|title=Gordon Bowker: Orwell's London|publisher=theorwellprise.co.uk|access-date=2 February 2011}}</ref>]]
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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]] rejected two of his works and Gollancz was equally cautious. At the same time, the communist ''[[Morning Star (British newspaper)|Daily Worker]]'' 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;<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/articles/col-piece-of-puzzle.htm |title=Another piece of the puzzle&nbsp;– Charles' George Orwell Links |publisher=Netcharles.com |access-date=21 October 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100619094314/http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/articles/col-piece-of-puzzle.htm |archive-date=19 June 2010 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.paralumun.com/bioorwell.htm |title=George Orwell Biography |publisher=Paralumun.com |access-date=21 October 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110427222231/http://www.paralumun.com/bioorwell.htm |archive-date=27 April 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/16-8-40/ |title=The Orwell Prize |publisher=Orwelldiaries.wordpress.com |date=16 August 2010 |access-date=21 October 2010}}</ref> and settled down to animal husbandry and writing ''Homage to Catalonia''.
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There were thoughts of going to India to work on ''[[The Pioneer (newspaper)|The Pioneer]]'', a newspaper in [[Lucknow]], but by March 1938 Orwell's health had deteriorated. He was admitted to [[Preston Hall, Aylesford|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]] 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]], 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.
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The novelist [[Leo Myers|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]] and [[Tangier]] 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]]''. 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 [[Charles Dickens|Dickens]] essay and it was in June 1939 that Orwell's father, Richard Blair, died.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Connelly |first1=Mark |title=George Orwell: A Literary Companion |date=2018 |publisher=McFarland |page=17}}</ref>
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===Second World War and ''Animal Farm''===
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At the outbreak of the [[Second World War]], Orwell's wife Eileen started working in the Censorship Department of the [[Ministry of Information (United Kingdom)|Ministry of Information]] in central London, staying during the week with her family in [[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 and Other Essays|Inside the Whale]]''. For the next year he was occupied writing reviews for plays, films and books for ''[[The Listener (magazine)|The Listener]]'', ''[[Time and Tide (magazine)|Time and Tide]]'' and ''New Adelphi''. On 29 March 1940 his long association with ''[[Tribune (magazine)|Tribune]]'' began<ref>''A Patriot After All, 1940–41'', p. xvii 1998 Secker & Warburg</ref> with a review of a sergeant's account of [[Napoleon]]'s [[French invasion of Russia|retreat from Moscow]]. At the beginning of 1940, the first edition of Connolly's ''[[Horizon (magazine)|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]]. 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.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Churchwell |first1=Sarah |title=Diaries |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/09/domestic-diaries-orwell-life |access-date=22 October 2018 |work=New Statesman |archive-date=8 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308153149/https://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/09/domestic-diaries-orwell-life |url-status=dead }}</ref>
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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 [[British Home Guard|Home Guard]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/newsroom/orwell/story/0,,1048203,00.html|title=About George Orwell |website=www.theguardian.com – Newsroom|access-date=2 September 2017}}</ref> He shared [[Tom Wintringham]]'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 [[mortar (weapon)|mortars]] of various kinds. Sergeant Orwell managed to recruit [[Fredric Warburg]] to his unit. During the [[Battle of Britain]] he used to spend weekends with Warburg and his new [[Zionist]] friend, [[T. R. Fyvel|Tosco Fyvel]], at Warburg's house at [[Twyford, Berkshire]]. 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]] on East London. In mid-1940, Warburg, Fyvel and Orwell planned [[Searchlight Books]]. 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.<ref>''A Patriot After All'', p. xviii</ref>
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Early in 1941 he began to write for the American ''[[Partisan Review]]'' which linked Orwell with [[The New York Intellectuals]] who were also anti-Stalinist,<ref>[[Frances Stonor Saunders]], ''[[Who Paid the Piper?]]'', p. 160</ref> and contributed to the Gollancz anthology ''The Betrayal of the Left'', written in the light of the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]] (although Orwell referred to it as the Russo-German Pact and the Hitler-Stalin Pact<ref>''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 2&nbsp;– My Country Right or Left 1940–1943'' p. 40 (Penguin)</ref>). He also applied unsuccessfully for a job at the [[Air Ministry]]. Meanwhile, he was still writing reviews of books and plays and at this time met the novelist [[Anthony 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]], while at Wallington Orwell was "[[Dig for Victory|digging for victory]]" by planting potatoes.
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{{Quotation|"One could not have a better example of the moral and emotional shallowness of our time, than the fact that we are now all more or less pro Stalin. This disgusting murderer is temporarily on our side, and so the purges, etc., are suddenly forgotten."|George Orwell, in his war-time diary, 3 July 1941<ref>''A Patriot After All 1940–1941'', p. 522</ref>}}
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In August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" when he was taken on full-time by the [[BBC]]'s Eastern Service. When interviewed for the job he indicated that he "accept[ed] absolutely the need for propaganda to be directed by the government" and stressed his view that, in wartime, discipline in the execution of government policy was essential.<ref name="ind060416">{{cite news |last1=Walsh |first1=John |title=BBC proposes 8ft tall bronze statue in honour of George Orwell |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/bbc-proposes-8ft-tall-bronze-statue-in-honour-of-george-orwell-a6971961.html |access-date=19 May 2020 |work=The Independent |date=6 April 2016}}</ref> He supervised cultural broadcasts to India to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine imperial links. This was Orwell's first experience of the rigid conformity of life in an office, and it gave him an opportunity to create cultural programmes with contributions from [[T. S. Eliot]], [[Dylan Thomas]], [[E. M. Forster]], [[Ahmad Ali|Ahmed Ali]], [[Mulk Raj Anand]], and [[William Empson]] among others.
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At the end of August he had a dinner with [[H. G. Wells]] which degenerated into a row because Wells had taken offence at observations Orwell made about him in a ''Horizon'' article. In October Orwell had a bout of bronchitis and the illness recurred frequently. [[David Astor]] was looking for a provocative contributor for ''[[The Observer]]'' and invited Orwell to write for him—the first article appearing in March 1942. In early 1942 Eileen changed jobs to work at the [[Minister of Food (United Kingdom)|Ministry of Food]] and in mid-1942 the Orwells moved to a larger flat, a ground floor and basement, 10a Mortimer Crescent in [[Maida Vale]]/[[Kilburn, London|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]] factory behind [[London King's Cross railway station|King's Cross Station]], moved into a flat close to George and Eileen.<ref>Crick (1982), pp. 432–33</ref>
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[[File:George-orwell-BBC.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Orwell spoke on many [[BBC]] and other broadcasts, but no recordings are known to survive.<ref name="Bowker2013">{{cite book|author=Gordon Bowker|title=George Orwell|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bdAzAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT309|year= 2013|publisher=Little, Brown Book Group|isbn=978-1405528054|pages=309–10}}</ref><ref name="Recordings Capture Writers' Voices Off The Page Listen Queue">{{cite news|title=Recordings Capture Writers' Voices Off The Page Listen Queue|newspaper = NPR.org|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96030704|publisher=NPR|access-date=5 November 2016}}</ref><ref name="BBC tried to take George Orwell off air because of 'unattractive' voice">{{Cite news|last1=Khan|first1=Urmeen|title=BBC tried to take George Orwell off air because of 'unattractive' voice|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/5445579/BBC-tried-to-take-George-Orwell-off-air-because-of-unattractive-voice.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220110/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/5445579/BBC-tried-to-take-George-Orwell-off-air-because-of-unattractive-voice.html |archive-date=10 January 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|website=Daily Telegraph|access-date=5 November 2016|quote=The BBC tried to take the author George Orwell off air because his voice was "unattractive", according to archive documents released by the corporation...no recording of Orwell's voice survives but contemporaries—such as the artist Lucian Freud—have described it as "monotonous" with "no power".|date=4 June 2009}}{{cbignore}}</ref>]]
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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 ''[[Tribune (magazine)|Tribune]]''<ref>Rodden (1989)</ref>{{RP|306}}<ref>Crick (1982)</ref>{{RP|441}} directed by [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] MPs [[Aneurin Bevan]] and [[George Strauss]]. 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]]''.
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In September 1943, Orwell resigned from the BBC post that he had occupied for two years.<ref name="Crick-LBC">{{cite book|last=Crick|first=Bernard R.|title=George Orwell: A Life|url=https://archive.org/details/georgeorwelllife0000cric|url-access=registration|date=1980|publisher=Little, Brown and Company|location=Boston|isbn=978-0316161121}}</ref>{{RP|352}} His resignation followed a report confirming his fears that few Indians listened to the broadcasts,<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Burmese_Days/english/e_mm_int|first=Malcolm |last=Muggeridge|title=Burmese Days ''(Introduction)''|publisher=[[Time Inc.]]|year=1962}} Muggeridge recalls that he asked Orwell if such broadcasts were useful, "'Perhaps not', he said, somewhat crestfallen. He added, more cheerfully, that anyway, no one could pick up the broadcasts except on short-wave sets which cost about the equivalent of an Indian labourer's earnings over 10 years"</ref> 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]]'' was broadcast. It was a genre in which he was greatly interested and which appeared on ''Animal Farm''{{'}}s title-page.<ref>''Two Wasted Years'', 1943, p. xxi, Secker & Warburg, 2001</ref> At this time he also resigned from the Home Guard on medical grounds.<ref>''I Have Tried to Tell the Truth'', p. xv. Secker & Warburg, 2001</ref>
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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<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yRHBGAAACAAJ |author1=Orwell, G. |author2=Davison, P. |title=I Have Tried to Tell the Truth |publisher=Secker & Warburg |location =London |year=1999 |isbn=978-0436203701}}</ref> and on 3 December 1943 started his regular personal column, "[[As I Please]]", usually addressing three or four subjects in each.<ref>''I Have Tried to Tell the Truth'', p. xxix</ref> He was still writing reviews for other magazines, including ''Partisan Review'', ''Horizon'', and the New York ''[[The Nation|Nation]]'' 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]]. 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.
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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]]. In June a [[V-1 flying bomb]] 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 (United Kingdom)|Ministry of Information]]. Smollett was later identified as a Soviet agent.<ref name="TGA">{{cite news |author=Garton Ash, Timothy |author-link=Timothy Garton Ash |title=Orwell's List |work=[[The New York Review of Books]] |date=25 September 2003|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305071504/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/09/25/orwells-list/|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2003/09/25/orwells-list/|archive-date=5 March 2016|access-date=26 April 2016}}</ref><ref name="Caute2009">{{cite book |last=Caute |first=David |author-link=David Caute |title=Politics and the Novel during the Cold War |year=2009 |publisher=Transaction Publishers |location=New Brunswick, NJ |isbn=978-1412811613 |page=79}}</ref>
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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 Blair (patron)|Richard Horatio Blair]].<ref>"He had led a quiet life as Richard Blair, not 'Richard Orwell'": Shelden (1991: 398; 489)</ref> By September 1944 they had set up home in [[Islington]], at 27b [[Canonbury Square]].<ref>Orwell: Collected Works, I Have Tried to Tell the Truth, p. 283</ref> Baby Richard joined them there, and Eileen gave up her work at the Ministry of Food to look after her family. [[Secker & Warburg]] 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 cites as [[Cologne]] 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."<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-10-03 |title=Reporting from the Ruins |url=https://orwellsociety.com/reporting-from-the-ruins/ |access-date=2022-03-01 |website=The Orwell Society |language=en-GB}}</ref> Some of his reports were published in the ''[[Manchester Evening News]]''.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Vrs-EAAAQBAJ |title=Ruins: Orwell's Reports as War Correspondent in France, Germany and Austria from February until June 1945 |first=George |last=Orwell |date=17 September 2021 |publisher=Comino Verlag |via=Google Books |isbn = 978-3945831311 |access-date=19 September 2021}}</ref>
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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 United Kingdom general election|1945 general election]] at the beginning of July. ''[[Animal Farm|Animal Farm: A Fairy Story]]'' was published in Britain on 17 August 1945, and a year later in the US, on 26 August 1946.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bloom |first1=Harold |title=George Orwell's Animal Farm |date=2009 |publisher=Infobase Publishing |page=128}}</ref>
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===Jura and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''===
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''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 ''[[Manchester Evening News]]'', though he also contributed to many small-circulation political and [[literary magazine]]s—with writing his best-known work, ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'', 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]], [[Isaac Deutscher]], [[Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth|Barbara Ward]] and [[Jon Kimche]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Koutsopanagou|first=Gioula|title=The British Press and the Greek Crisis, 1943–1949: Orchestrating the Cold-War 'Consensus' in Britain|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2020|isbn=978-1137551559|location=London|pages=52–53}}</ref>
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[[File:Barnhill (Cnoc an t-Sabhail) - geograph.org.uk - 451643.jpg|thumb|[[Barnhill, Jura|Barnhill]] on the Isle of [[Jura, Scotland|Jura]], Scotland. Orwell completed ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' while living in the farmhouse.]]
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In the year following Eileen's death he published around 130 articles and a selection of his ''[[Critical Essays (Orwell)|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, Scotland|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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://theorwellprize.co.uk/news/remembering-jura/ |title=Remembering Jura, Richard Blair |publisher=Theorwellprize.co.uk |date=5 October 2012 |access-date=14 May 2014}}</ref> 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]]'s sister-in-law); Ann Popham who happened to live in the same block of flats; and [[Sonia Brownell]], 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]]. Given the post-war shortages, both parties agreed not to publish it.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.theorwellprize.co.uk/life-and-work.aspx |title=The Orwell Prize {{!}} Life and Work – Exclusive Access to the Orwell Archive |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071210180526/http://www.theorwellprize.co.uk/life-and-work.aspx |archive-date=10 December 2007}}</ref> 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, Jura|Barnhill]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.orwelltoday.com/jurabarnhillvisit.shtml|title= Barnhill}} is located at {{Coord|56|06|39|N|5|41|30|W|display=inline}} ([[British national grid reference system]] NR705970)</ref>
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This was an abandoned farmhouse with outbuildings near the northern end of the island, at the end of a five-mile (8&nbsp;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 (writer)|Paul Potts]] 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 ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]''. 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.<ref>Holbrook, David in Wadham, Stephen (1984) ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books.</ref> Watson could no longer stand being with Avril and she and her boyfriend left.<ref>{{cite news |title=1984 author George Orwell feared for life while writing on Jura and kept a pistol beneath his pillow |url=https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/1984-author-george-orwell-feared-for-life-while-writing-on-jura-and-kept-a-pistol-beneath-his-pillow1984-author-feared-for-life-while-writing-on-juraso-why-did-george-orwell-keep-a-pistol-beneath-his/ |access-date=7 December 2021 |work=Sunday Post}}</ref>
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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 [[Winter of 1946–1947 in the United Kingdom|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]] 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.<ref name=Carroll>{{cite news|url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-writer-wronged-nc07cw9clc5 |title=Tim Carroll 'A writer wronged' |journal=The Sunday Times |publisher=Timesonline.co.uk |date= 15 August 2014|access-date=14 May 2014}}</ref>
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Orwell left London for Jura on 10 April 1947.<ref name=Taylor/> In July he ended the lease on the Wallington cottage.<ref>Crick (1982), p. 530</ref> 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,<ref>Orwell: Collected Works, ''It Is What I Think'', p. xx, ''Daily Telegraph'', 2 December 2013, [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/10487292/George-Orwell-nearly-drowned-in-a-whirlpool-before-completing-Nighteen-Eighty-Four.html]</ref> which nearly led to loss of life whilst trying to cross the notorious [[Gulf of Corryvreckan]] 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]] was diagnosed and the request for permission to import [[streptomycin]] to treat Orwell went as far as [[Aneurin Bevan]], then Minister of Health. [[David Astor]] helped with supply and payment and Orwell began his course of streptomycin on 19 or 20 February 1948.<ref>It Is what I Think, p. 274</ref> 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.
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[[File:Animal Farm strip cartoon.jpg|thumb|280px|One of the ''[[Animal Farm]]'' cartoon strips produced for the Cold War anti-communist department of the British Foreign Office, the [[Information Research Department|IRD]]]]
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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]] (IRD), set up by the [[Labour Party (UK)|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.<ref name="TGA"/><ref>{{cite news |work=The Guardian |location=London |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/21/books.artsandhumanities |first=John |last=Ezard |title=Blair's babe: Did love turn Orwell into a government stooge? |date=21 June 2003}}</ref> To further promote ''Animal Farm'', the IRD commissioned cartoon strips, drawn by [[Norman Pett]], to be placed in newspapers across the globe.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Defty|first=Andrew|title=Britain, America and Anti-Communist Propaganda 1945-1953: The Information Research Department|publisher=Routledge|year=2005|isbn=|location=e-book version|pages=161}}</ref> Orwell received more streptomycin treatment and improved slightly. In June 1949 ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' was published, to critical acclaim.<ref>{{cite news |title=1950: Acclaimed author George Orwell dies |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/21/newsid_2669000/2669789.stm |access-date=20 September 2021 |publisher=BBC}}</ref>
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===Final months and death===
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[[File:UCL Gower Street.jpg|thumb|[[University College Hospital]] in London where Orwell died]]
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Orwell's health continued to decline after the diagnosis of [[tuberculosis]] in December 1947. In mid-1949, he courted [[Sonia Brownell]], and they announced their engagement in September, shortly before he was removed to [[University College Hospital]] in London. Sonia took charge of Orwell's affairs and attended him diligently in the hospital. 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.<ref name=Carroll/> Orwell's wedding took place in the hospital room on 13 October 1949, with David Astor as best man.<ref name="Ingle1993">{{cite book|last=Ingle|first=Stephen|title=George Orwell: a political life|year=1993|publisher=Manchester University Press|location=Manchester, England|isbn=978-0719032332|page=90}}</ref> Orwell was in decline and was visited by an assortment of visitors including Muggeridge, Connolly, [[Lucian Freud]], Stephen Spender, [[Evelyn Waugh]], Paul Potts, Anthony Powell, and his Eton tutor Anthony Gow.<ref name=Taylor/> 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.<ref name=Carroll/> 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.<ref name=Carroll/> Early on the morning of 21 January, an artery burst in Orwell's lungs, killing him at age 46.<ref name=obit>{{Cite news |title=George Orwell, author, 46, Dead. British Writer, Acclaimed for His '1984' and 'Animal Farm,' is Victim of Tuberculosis. Two Novels Popular Here Distaste for Imperialism |work=The New York Times |date=22 January 1950}}</ref>
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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.
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[[File:Grave of Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell), All Saints, Sutton Courtenay - geograph.org.uk - 362277.jpg|thumb|upright|Orwell's grave in [[All Saints' Church, Sutton Courtenay|All Saints']] parish churchyard, [[Sutton Courtenay]], Oxfordshire]]
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David Astor lived in [[Sutton Courtenay]], Oxfordshire, and arranged for Orwell to be interred in the churchyard of [[All Saints' Church, Sutton Courtenay|All Saints']] there.<ref>[[Andrew Anthony]] (11 May 2003). [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/11/georgeorwell.classics "Orwell: the Observer years"], ''[[The Observer]]'', Observer Review Pages, p. 1.</ref> 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.
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Orwell's adopted son, [[Richard Blair (patron)|Richard Horatio Blair]], was brought up by Orwell's sister Avril. He is patron of [[The Orwell Society]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.orwellsociety.com/?page_id=116|title=Committee members|publisher=orwellsociety.com|access-date=25 February 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150210224348/http://orwellsociety.com/?page_id=116|archive-date=10 February 2015|url-status=dead}}</ref>
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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.<ref name=Carroll/>
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==Literary career and legacy==
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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: ''[[Down and Out in Paris and London]]'' (describing a period of poverty in these cities), ''[[The Road to Wigan Pier]]'' (describing the living conditions of the poor in northern England, and [[class division]] generally) and ''[[Homage to Catalonia]]''. According to [[Irving Howe]], Orwell was "the best English essayist since [[William Hazlitt|Hazlitt]], perhaps since [[Samuel Johnson|Dr Johnson]]".<ref name="Howe">{{Cite journal|author-link=Irving Howe|title=George Orwell: 'As the bones know'|first=Irving|last=Howe|journal=[[Harper's Magazine]]|date= January 1969}}(reprinted in ''[[Newsweek]]''). Howe considered Orwell "the finest journalist of his day and the foremost architect of the English essay since [[William Hazlitt|Hazlitt]]".</ref>
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Modern readers are more often introduced to Orwell as a novelist, particularly through his enormously successful titles ''[[Animal Farm]]'' and ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]''. The former is often thought to reflect degeneration in the Soviet Union after the [[Russian Revolution of 1917|Russian Revolution]] and the rise of [[Stalinism]]; the latter, life under [[totalitarianism|totalitarian rule]]. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' is often compared to ''[[Brave New World]]'' by [[Aldous Huxley]]; both are powerful [[dystopia]]n novels warning of a future world where the state machine exerts complete control over social life. In 1984, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' and [[Ray Bradbury]]'s ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]'' were honoured with the [[Prometheus Award]] for their contributions to dystopian literature. In 2011 he received it again for ''Animal Farm''. In 2003, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' was listed at number eight on the BBC's [[The Big Read]] poll.<ref>{{cite news |title=BBC&nbsp;– The Big Read |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml |access-date=31 December 2021 |agency=BBC}}</ref> In 2021, readers of the [[The New York Times Book Review|''New York Times Book Review'']] rated it third in a list of "The best books of the past 125 years."<ref>{{Cite news|last=Times|first=The New York|date=29 December 2021|title=What's the Best Book of the Past 125 Years? We Asked Readers to Decide.|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/28/books/best-book-winners.html|access-date=31 December 2021|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>
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''[[Coming Up for Air]]'', his last novel before World War II, is the most "English" of his novels; alarms of war mingle with images of idyllic [[Thames]]-side [[Edwardian]] childhood of protagonist George Bowling. The novel is pessimistic; industrialism and [[capitalism]] have killed the best of [[Merry England|Old England]], and there were great, new external threats. In homely terms, its protagonist George Bowling posits the totalitarian hypotheses of [[Franz Borkenau]], Orwell, [[Ignazio Silone]] 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&nbsp;... They're something quite new—something that's never been heard of before".<ref>{{cite book |title=The Penguin complete novels of George Orwell |date=1976 |publisher=Penguin |page=523}}</ref>
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===Literary influences===
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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: [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]], [[Jonathan Swift|Swift]], [[Henry Fielding|Fielding]], [[Charles Dickens|Dickens]], [[Charles Reade]], [[Gustave Flaubert|Flaubert]] and, among modern writers, [[James Joyce]], [[T. S. Eliot]] and [[D. H. Lawrence]]. But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most is [[W. Somerset Maugham]], whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills."<ref>{{cite book |title=Writers: Their Lives and Works |date=2018 |publisher=Dorling Kindersley Ltd |page=245}}</ref> Elsewhere, Orwell strongly praised the works of [[Jack London]], especially his book ''[[The Road (London book)|The Road]]''. Orwell's investigation of poverty in ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' strongly resembles that of Jack London's ''[[The People of the Abyss]]'', 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]] he wrote, "The minds of all of us, and therefore the physical world, would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Sperber |first1=Murray A. |title=The Author as Cultural Hero: H. G. Wells and George Orwell |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24780682 |publisher=University of Manitoba |date=1981|jstor=24780682 }}</ref>
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Orwell was an admirer of [[Arthur Koestler]] 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]], in the [[Vale of Ffestiniog]]. Orwell reviewed Koestler's ''[[Darkness at Noon]]'' for the ''[[New Statesman]]'' in 1941, saying:
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<blockquote>
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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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.walesartsreview.org/to-the-detriment-of-us-all-the-untouched-legacy-of-arthur-koestler-and-george-orwell/|title=The Untouched Legacy of Arthur Koestler and George Orwell|date=24 February 2016|access-date=2 September 2017}}</ref>
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</blockquote>
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Other writers admired by Orwell included: [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]], [[George Gissing]], [[Graham Greene]], [[Herman Melville]], [[Henry Miller]], [[Tobias Smollett]], [[Mark Twain]], [[Joseph Conrad]], and [[Yevgeny Zamyatin]].<ref>''Letter to Gleb Struve, 17 February 1944'', Orwell: Essays, Journalism and Letters Vol 3, eds. Sonia Brownell and Ian Angus</ref> He was both an admirer and a critic of [[Rudyard Kipling]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Burmese_Days/english/e_mm_int |title=Malcolm Muggeridge: Introduction |access-date=23 December 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uk/2939606.html |title=Does Orwell Matter? |access-date=23 December 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080705141429/http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uk/2939606.html |archive-date=5 July 2008 }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/kipling/english/e_rkip |title=George Orwell: Rudyard Kipling |access-date=23 December 2008}}</ref> 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",<ref>''Notes on Nationalism''</ref> and to [[Evelyn Waugh]], who was, he wrote, "ab[ou]t as good a novelist as one can be (i.e. as novelists go today) while holding untenable opinions".<ref>''Orwell: Essays, Journalism and Letters'' Vol 4, eds. Sonia Brownell and Ian Angus, p. 576</ref>
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===Orwell as literary critic===
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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]],<ref>{{cite web |last1=Orwell |first1=George |title=Charles Dickens |url=http://www.george-orwell.org/Charles_Dickens/0.html |website=george-orwell.org |access-date=17 January 2019}}</ref>
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{{quote|"When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer. I feel this very strongly with [[Jonathon Swift|Swift]], with [[Daniel Defoe|Defoe]], with [[Henry Fielding|Fielding]], [[Stendhal]], [[William Makepeace Thackeray|Thackeray]], [[Gustave Flaubert|Flaubert]], though in several cases I do not know what these people looked like and do not want to know. What one sees is the face that the writer ought to have. Well, in the case of Dickens I see a face that is not quite the face of Dickens's photographs, though it resembles it. It is the face of a man of about forty, with a small beard and a high colour. He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry—in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls."}}
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[[George Woodcock]] suggested that the last two sentences also describe Orwell.<ref>George Woodcock Introduction to Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin 1984</ref>
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Orwell wrote a critique of [[George Bernard Shaw]]'s play ''[[Arms and the Man#Critical acclaim|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 [[Ministry of Information (United Kingdom)|The Ministry of Information]] of exaggerating Wodehouse's actions for propaganda purposes.
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=== Food writing ===
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In 1946, the [[British Council]] commissioned Orwell to write an essay on British food as part of a drive to promote British relations abroad.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|agency=BBC|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47155257|title=Orwell gets apology for rejected food essay|date=7 February 2019|access-date=7 February 2019|language=en-GB}}</ref> 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".<ref name=":0"/> 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."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.britishcouncil.org/organisation/policy-insight-research/defence-english-cooking|title=George Orwell: British Cookery {{!}} British Council|website=www.britishcouncil.org|language=en|access-date=7 February 2019}}</ref> He wrote that [[Tea in the United Kingdom|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, [[Biscuit#Confectionery biscuits|biscuit]]s are much eaten at tea-time”.<ref name=":0"/><ref>{{cite news |title=British Cookery |url=https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/british-cookery/ |access-date=20 August 2021 |work=Orwell Foundation}}</ref> Orwell included a recipe for [[marmalade]], a popular British spread on bread.<ref name=":0"/> 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 [[Rationing in the United Kingdom|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.<ref name=":0" />
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===Reception and evaluations of Orwell's works===
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[[File:Black block.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|[[Anarchists]] in Bulgaria protesting against a [[police state]] and the [[European Union]] with an Orwell quote: ''"War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength"'']]
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Arthur Koestler said that Orwell's "uncompromising intellectual honesty made him appear almost inhuman at times".<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.orwelltoday.com/orwellpersona.shtml|title=5.Orwell's Persona|website=www.orwelltoday.com}}</ref> [[Ben Wattenberg]] stated: "Orwell's writing pierced intellectual hypocrisy wherever he found it".<ref name="thinktank">{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript990.html|title=PBS: Think Tank: Transcript for 'Orwell's Century'|work=pbs.org|access-date=25 February 2015}}</ref> 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'".<ref>{{Cite news|newspaper=The Guardian |location=UK |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jun/07/biography.georgeorwell|title=The saint of common decency|first=Piers|last=Brendon|date=7 June 2003}}</ref> [[Raymond Williams]] 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".<ref>Raymond Williams ''Politics and Letters'' 1979</ref> [[Christopher Norris (critic)|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".<ref>Christopher Norris ''Language, Truth and Ideology: Orwell and the Post War Left'' in ''Inside the Myth: Orwell views from the Left'' Lawrence and Whishart 1984</ref> The American scholar Scott Lucas has described Orwell as an enemy of the Left.<ref>Lucas, Scott (2003). ''Orwell''. Haus Publishing. {{ISBN|1904341330}}</ref> 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".<ref>{{cite web|author=O. Dag |url=http://orwell.ru/a_life/newsinger/english/e_oc |title=John Newsinger: Orwell Centenary: The Biographies |language=ru |publisher=Orwell.ru |access-date=14 May 2014}}</ref>
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Orwell's work has taken a prominent place in the school literature curriculum in England,<ref>Rodden (1989: 394–95)</ref> 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]]s). A 2016 UK poll saw ''Animal Farm'' ranked the nation's favourite book from school.<ref>{{cite news |title=George Orwell's Animal Farm tops list of the nation's favourite books from school |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/george-orwells-animal-farm-tops-list-of-the-nations-favourite-books-from-school-a6994351.html |access-date=10 April 2020 |work=The Independent}}</ref>
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Historian John Rodden stated: "[[John Podhoretz]] did claim that if Orwell were alive today, he'd be standing with the [[neo-conservatives]] 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?"<ref name="thinktank"/>
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In ''Orwell's Victory'', [[Christopher Hitchens]] 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".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Editorial review of 'Orwell's Victory'|first=Christopher|last=Hitchens|isbn=978-0141005355|year=2002}}</ref>
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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."<ref name="thinktank"/> Rodden refers to the essay "[[Why I Write]]",<ref name=whyiwrite>{{Cite web |title=Why I Write |last=Orwell |first=George |website=The Orwell Foundation] |publisher=Gangrel No. 4|date=Summer 1946 |url= https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/why-i-write/|quote=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.}}</ref> 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)<ref name="thinktank"/> 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:
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<blockquote>
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"[''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&nbsp;....'<br>[''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."<ref name="thinktank"/></blockquote>
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Fyvel wrote about Orwell: "His crucial experience&nbsp;[...] 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."<ref>Fyvel, T.R., "A Writer's Life", ''World Review'', June 1950</ref><ref>Fyvel, T.R., "A Case for George Orwell?", ''Twentieth Century'', September 1956, pp. 257–58</ref>
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In October 2015 Finlay Publisher, for the Orwell Society, published ''George Orwell 'The Complete Poetry''', compiled and presented by [[Dione Venables]].<ref>[http://www.scarthinbooks.com/products-page/scarthin-books-online-bookshop-cromford-derbyshire/george-orwell-the-complete-poetry/#sthash.y1FWVgna.dpuf]{{dead link|date=March 2018|bot=InternetArchiveBot|fix-attempted=yes}}</ref>
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===Influence on language and writing===
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In his essay "[[Politics and the English Language]]" (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:
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<blockquote>
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# Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
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# Never use a long word where a short one will do.
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# If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
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# Never use the passive where you can use the active.
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# Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
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# Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm|first = George |last = Orwell |title = Politics and the English Language |date = April 1946 |publisher = [[Horizon (magazine)|Horizon]] |work = mtholyoke.edu |access-date = 15 July 2010|url-status = dead|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100715144246/http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm |archive-date = 15 July 2010 |df = dmy}}</ref></blockquote>
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Orwell worked as a journalist at ''[[The Observer]]'' for seven years, and its editor [[David Astor]] gave a copy of this celebrated essay to every new recruit.<ref name="Good journalism"/> In 2003, literary editor at the newspaper  [[Robert McCrum]] wrote, "Even now, it is quoted in our style book".<ref name="Good journalism">{{cite news |title=George Orwell and the eternal truths of good journalism |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/09/georgeorwell |access-date=17 July 2021 |newspaper=The Guardian}}</ref> Journalist [[Jonathan Heawood]] noted: "Orwell's criticism of slovenly language is still taken very seriously."<ref name="Good journalism"/>
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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."<ref>{{cite web|last=Rubin|first=Andrew N|url=http://outsidethewhale.com/2011/10/04/70/|title=The Rhetoric of Perpetual War|access-date=11 October 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120123221507/http://outsidethewhale.com/2011/10/04/70/|archive-date=23 January 2012}}</ref>
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The adjective "[[Orwellian]]" connotes an attitude and a policy of control by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth and manipulation of the past. In ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'', 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]]" is a simplified and obfuscatory language designed to make independent thought impossible. "[[Doublethink]]" means holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. The "[[Thought Police]]" are those who suppress all dissenting opinion. "[[Prolefeed]]" 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.
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Orwell may have been the first to use the term "[[cold war (general 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:
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<blockquote>"We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. [[James Burnham]]'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."<ref>{{cite web
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|url=http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb.html
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|first=George|last=Orwell
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|title=You and the Atom Bomb
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|publisher=[[Tribune (magazine)|Tribune]]
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|date=19 October 1945
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|access-date=15 July 2010
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}}</ref></blockquote>
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===Modern culture===
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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.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Jaworowski|first1=Ken|title=Review: A Dynamic Actor Redeems 'Orwell in America'|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/theater/review-orwell-in-america.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/theater/review-orwell-in-america.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live|work=The New York Times|date=16 October 2016}}{{cbignore}}</ref>
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Orwell's birthplace, a [[bungalow]] in [[Motihari]], Bihar, India, was opened as a museum in May 2015.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/british-novelist-george-orwell-motihari-bihar/1/438537.html|title=George Orwell's house in Bihar turned into museum|date=17 May 2015|website=India Today|access-date=16 January 2018}}</ref>
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===Statue===
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[[File:George Orwell statue - BBC London (38562767202).jpg|thumb|upright|[[Statue of George Orwell]] outside [[Broadcasting House]], headquarters of the [[BBC]]]]
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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.{{refn|The statue is owned by [[The Orwell Society]] under the patronage of [[Richard Blair (patron)|Richard Blair]], Orwell's adopted son|group= n}} 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/41a0eedb-c435-479d-aa63-a89ad81daf01|title=Orwell statue unveiled|date=7 November 2017|website=BBC|access-date=7 November 2017}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/aug/09/homage-to-george-orwell-bbc-statue-wins-planning-permission|title=Homage to George Orwell: BBC statue wins planning permission|first=Maev|last=Kennedy|date=9 August 2016|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|access-date=30 September 2017|via=www.theguardian.com}}</ref>
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==Personal life==
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===Childhood===
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[[Jacintha Buddicom]]'s account, ''Eric & Us'', provides an insight into Blair's childhood.<ref name=autogenerated4>Jacintha Buddicom ''Eric & Us'' Frewin 1974.</ref> 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.<ref>remembering Orwell, p. 22</ref> [[Cyril Connolly]] provides an account of Blair as a child in ''[[Enemies of Promise]]''.<ref name=Connolly>{{cite book |author=Connolly, Cyril |author-link=Cyril Connolly |title=Enemies of Promise |orig-year= 1938 |year=1973 |publisher=Deutsch |location=London |isbn=978-0233964881}}</ref> 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.<ref>Orwell Remembered, p. 23</ref>
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[[File:Eton College front 4.jpg|alt=A large gothic facade|thumb|Orwell's time at Eton College was formative in his attitude and his later career as a writer.]]
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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".<ref name=Connolly/> At Eton, [[John Vaughan Wilkes]], 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&nbsp;[...] We enjoyed arguing with him. He would generally win the arguments—or think he had anyhow."<ref>John Wilkes in Stephen Wadham's ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books 1984.</ref> [[R. A. B. Mynors|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."<ref name=Mynors>Roger Mynors in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books 1984.</ref>
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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.<ref name="autogenerated1"/> At Eton, he played tricks on John Crace, his [[Master in College|housemaster]], among which was to enter a spoof advertisement in a college magazine implying pederasty.<ref>{{cite book |author=Hollis, Christopher |author-link=Christopher Hollis |title=A study of George Orwell: The man and his works |publisher=Hollis & Carter |location=London |year=1956 |oclc=2742921}}</ref> Gow, his tutor, said he "made himself as big a nuisance as he could" and "was a very unattractive boy".<ref>Crick (1982), p. 116</ref> Later Blair was expelled from the [[Cram school|crammer]] at Southwold for sending a dead rat as a birthday present to the town surveyor.<ref name="autogenerated1984">Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick ''Orwell Remembered'' 1984</ref> 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.<ref name="autogenerated1968">{{cite book |title=The collected essays, journalism and letters of George Orwell |publisher=Secker & Warburg |year=1969 |location=London |author=Orwell, George |author2=Angus, Ian |author3=Orwell, Sonia |isbn=978-0436350153}}</ref>
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Blair had an interest in natural history which stemmed from his childhood. In letters from school he wrote about caterpillars and butterflies,<ref name="Crick-S&W">{{cite book |author=Crick, Bernard |title=George Orwell: A Life |publisher=Secker & Warburg |year=1980 |location=London |isbn=978-0436114502}}</ref> and Buddicom recalls his keen interest in ornithology. He also enjoyed fishing and shooting rabbits, and conducting experiments as in cooking a hedgehog<ref name="autogenerated1"/> or shooting down a jackdaw from the Eton roof to dissect it.<ref name=Mynors/> 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<ref>R.S. Peters ''A Boy's View of George Orwell'' in ''Psychology and Ethical Development'' Allen & Unwin 1974</ref> and at Hayes.<ref>Geoffrey Stevens in Stephen Wadham's ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin 1984</ref> His adult diaries are permeated with his observations on nature.
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===Relationships and marriage===
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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.<ref name="autogenerated1"/>
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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."<ref name=autogenerated6>Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books 1984</ref>
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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."<ref name=Wadhams/> 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]].<ref>Correspondence in ''Collected Essays Journalism and Letters'', Secker & Warburg 1968</ref>
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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."<ref>Peter Davison ed. ''George Orwell: Complete Works'' XI 336</ref> Jackson was to be the most critical of Orwell's marriage to [[Eileen O'Shaughnessy]], 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."<ref>Crick (1982), p. 480</ref> Similarly he suggested to Celia Kirwan that they had both been unfaithful.<ref>Celia Goodman interview with Shelden June 1989 in Michael Shelden ''Orwell: The Authorised Biography''</ref> There are several testaments that it was a well-matched and happy marriage.<ref name=Dakin>Henry Dakin in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell''</ref><ref name=Donahue>Patrica Donahue in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell''</ref><ref>Meyer, Michael. ''Not Prince Hamlet: Literary and Theatrical Memoirs'' 1989</ref>
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In June 1944, Orwell and Eileen adopted a three-week-old boy they named [[Richard Blair (patron)|Richard Horatio]].<ref>{{cite book|title=The Lost Orwell|first=Peter|last=Davison|author-link=Peter Davison (professor)|page=244|publisher=Timewell Press|year=2007|isbn=978-1857252149}}</ref> According to Richard, Orwell was a wonderful father who gave him devoted, if rather rugged, attention and a great degree of freedom.<ref>{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/news/george-packer/orwell-and-son|title=Orwell and Son|magazine=The New Yorker|access-date=2 September 2017|date=25 March 2009}}</ref> After Orwell's death Richard went to live with Orwell's sister and her husband.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://orwellsocietyblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/richard-blair-on-life-with-my-aunt-avril/|title=Richard Blair on Life With My Aunt Avril|date=27 October 2011|access-date=2 September 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170829203004/https://orwellsocietyblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/richard-blair-on-life-with-my-aunt-avril/|archive-date=29 August 2017|url-status=dead}}</ref>
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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 [[Sonia Brownell]] accepted.<ref>Spurling, Hilary. 2002. ''The girl from the Fiction Department: a portrait of Sonia Orwell.'' New York: Counterpoint, p. 96.</ref> Orwell had met her when she was assistant to Cyril Connolly, at ''[[Horizon (magazine)|Horizon]]'' literary magazine.<ref>Crick (1982), p. 449</ref> 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''.
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===Social interactions===
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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|"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."<ref>Ian Angus Interview 23–25 April 1965 quoted in Stansky and Abrahams ''The Unknown George Orwell''</ref> Adrian Fierz commented "He wasn't interested in racing or greyhounds or pub crawling or [[shove ha'penny]]. He just did not have much in common with people who did not share his intellectual interests."<ref>Adrian Fierz in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell''</ref> Awkwardness attended many of his encounters with working-class representatives, as with Pollitt and McNair,<ref>John McNair ''George Orwell: The Man I knew'' MA Thesis – Newcastle University Library 1965, quoted Crick (1982), p. 317</ref> but his courtesy and good manners were often commented on. [[Jack Common]] observed on meeting him for the first time, "Right away manners, and more than manners—breeding—showed through."<ref>Jack Common Collection Newcastle University Library quoted in Crick (1982), p. 204</ref>
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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 "[[Stan Laurel|Laurel]]" after the film comedian.<ref name="autogenerated1996"/> 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 [was] that even the inanimate world was against him."<ref>Geoffrey Gorer&nbsp;– recorded for Melvyn Bragg BBC Omnibus production ''The Road to the Left'' 1970</ref> When he shared a flat with Heppenstall and Sayer, he was treated in a patronising manner by the younger men.<ref>Rayner Heppenstall ''Four Absentees'' in Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick ''Orwell Remembered'' 1984</ref> At the BBC in the 1940s, "everybody would pull his leg"<ref name =Wilshin>Sunday Wilshin in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books 1984</ref> and Spender described him as having real entertainment value "like, as I say, watching a Charlie Chaplin movie".<ref>Stephen Spender in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books 1984</ref> A friend of Eileen's reminisced about her tolerance and humour, often at Orwell's expense.<ref name=Donahue/>
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One biography of Orwell accused him of having had an authoritarian streak.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780805076936-1 |title=Powell's Books&nbsp;– Synopses and Reviews of D J Taylor ''Orwell: The Life'' |publisher=Powells.com |date=12 October 2010 |access-date=21 October 2010}}</ref> 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.<ref>Maung Htin Aung ''George Orwell and Burma'' in Miriam Goss ''The World of George Orwell'' Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1971</ref> One of his former pupils recalled [[school corporal punishment|being beaten]] so hard he could not sit down for a week.<ref>Interview with Geoffrey Stevens, Crick (1982), pp. 222–23</ref> 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]] 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"<ref>Heppenstall ''The Shooting Stick'' Twentieth Century April 1955</ref> and Mabel Fierz confirmed that Heppenstall came to her in a sorry state the following day.<ref>Crick (1982), pp. 274–75</ref>
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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.<ref name= Dakin/>
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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.<ref>Michael Meyer ''Not Prince Hamlet: Literary and Theatrical Memoirs'' Secker and Warburg 1989</ref> 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.<ref>T. R. Fyval ''George Orwell: A Personal Memoir'' 1982</ref> Some, like [[Michael Ayrton]], called him "Gloomy George", but others developed the idea that he was an "English [[secular saint]]".<ref>{{cite news|first=Robert |last=McCrum |author-link=Robert McCrum |title=George Orwell was no fan of the News of the World |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jul/14/george-orwell-news-world |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=14 July 2011|access-date=7 May 2018}}</ref>
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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.<ref>{{Citation| url= https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-prize/orwell/resources/d-j-taylor-orwells-voice/| title = Orwell's Voice| author= D. J. Taylor| publisher= [[Orwell Prize]]| access-date = 26 April 2017}}</ref>
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===Lifestyle===
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Orwell was a heavy smoker, who rolled his own cigarettes from strong [[Shag (tobacco)|shag tobacco]], 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 [[Culture of England|English culture]]",<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=11826680 |title=Still the Moon Under Water |newspaper=The Economist |location =London |date=28 July 2009}}</ref> Orwell considered [[fish and chips]], [[association football|football]], the [[pub]], strong tea, cut-price chocolate, [[Cinema of the United Kingdom|the movies]], and radio among the chief comforts for the working class.<ref>{{cite book|author=Dewey, Peter |date=2014|title=War and Progress: Britain 1914–1945|page= 325|publisher= Routledge}}</ref> He advocated a patriotic defence of a British way of life that could not be trusted to intellectuals or, by implication, the state:
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{{quote|"We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official – the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the “nice cup of tea”. The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above."<ref>{{cite book |title=The Complete Works of George Orwell: A patriot after all, 1940-1941 |date=1998 |publisher=Secker & Warburg |page=294}}</ref>}}
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{{Quote box
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| quote = "By putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk, whereas one is likely to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round"
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| source = — One of Orwell's eleven rules for making tea from his essay "[[A Nice Cup of Tea]]" which appeared in the ''[[Evening Standard|London Evening Standard]]'', 12 January 1946<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/25/science.highereducation "How to make a perfect cuppa: put milk in first"]. ''The Guardian'' (London). Retrieved 30 December 2014</ref>
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Orwell enjoyed strong tea—he had [[Fortnum & Mason]]'s tea brought to him in Catalonia.<ref name=Taylor/> His 1946 essay, "[[A Nice Cup of Tea]]", appeared in the ''[[Evening Standard|London Evening Standard]]'' article on how to [[Tea in the United Kingdom|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".<ref>{{cite book|author1=Orwell, George |author2= Angus, Ian |author3= Davison, Sheila|date=1998|title=The Complete Works of George Orwell: Smothered under journalism|orig-year= 1946|page=34|publisher= Secker & Warburg}}</ref> He appreciated English beer, taken regularly and moderately, despised drinkers of [[lager]]<ref>Lettice Cooper in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'', Penguin Books 1984</ref> and wrote about an imagined, ideal [[Pub|British pub]] in his 1946 ''Evening Standard'' article, "[[The Moon Under Water]]".<ref>{{Cite journal|url=http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/by-orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-moon-under-water/|first=George|last=Orwell|title=The Moon Under Water|journal=[[Evening Standard]]|date=9 February 1946}}</ref> Not as particular about food, he enjoyed the wartime "Victory Pie"<ref>Julian Symonds in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books 1984</ref> and extolled canteen food at the BBC.<ref name=Wilshin/> He preferred traditional English dishes, such as [[roast beef]], and [[kipper]]s.<ref>Crick (1982), p. 502</ref> His 1945 essay, "In Defence of English Cooking", included [[Yorkshire pudding]], [[crumpets]], [[English muffin|muffins]], innumerable [[Biscuit#Commonwealth of Nations and Europe|biscuits]], [[Christmas pudding]], [[shortbread]], various [[List of British cheeses|British cheeses]] and Oxford [[marmalade]].<ref>Sophie Mackenzie: ''[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/nov/09/george-orwell-saffron-buns-food George Orwell's hot and cold British menu]'', The Guardian. Retrieved 3 July 2017</ref> Reports of his [[Islington]] days refer to the cosy afternoon tea table.<ref>{{cite book|author=Cunningham, Ian |date=2001|title=A Reader's Guide to Writers' London|url=https://archive.org/details/readersguidetowr00cunn |url-access=registration |page= [https://archive.org/details/readersguidetowr00cunn/page/165 165]|publisher= Prion|isbn=9781853754258}}</ref>
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His dress sense was unpredictable and usually casual.<ref>Crick (1982), p. 504</ref> In Southwold, he had the best cloth from the local tailor<ref>Jack Denny in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'', Penguin Books 1984</ref> 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.<ref>Bob Edwards in Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick ''Orwell Remembered'', 1984</ref><ref>Jennie Lee in Peter Davison, ''Complete Works'' XI 5</ref> David Astor described him as looking like a prep school master,<ref>David Astor Interview, in Michael Shelden</ref> while according to the Special Branch dossier, Orwell's tendency to dress "in Bohemian fashion" revealed that the author was "a Communist".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/07/opinion/edorwell.php |title=Watching Orwell – International Herald Tribune |access-date=23 December 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080914180341/http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/07/opinion/edorwell.php |archive-date=14 September 2008}}</ref>
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Orwell's confusing approach to matters of social decorum—on the one hand expecting a working-class guest to dress for dinner,<ref>Jack Braithwaite in Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'', Penguin Books 1984</ref> and on the other, slurping tea out of a saucer at the BBC canteen<ref>John Morris "Some are more equal than others", ''Penguin New Writing'', No. 40 1950</ref>—helped stoke his reputation as an English eccentric.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/apr/18/in-search-of-english-eccentric|title=Review: In Search of the English Eccentric by Henry Hemming|last=Pindar|first=Ian|date=17 April 2009|newspaper=The Guardian|language=en|access-date=19 September 2018}}</ref>
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==Views==
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===Religion===
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[[File:Graves of Astor and Orwell, All Saints, Sutton Courtenay - geograph.org.uk - 362296.jpg|alt=A small row of gravestones|thumb|Orwell was an atheist and a robust critic of Christianity. Nevertheless, he was sentimentally attached to church services, and was buried in All Saints' parish churchyard in [[Sutton Courtenay]], Oxfordshire.]]
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Orwell was an atheist who identified himself with the [[humanism|humanist]] outlook on life.<ref>{{cite web
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|url = https://www.spectator.co.uk/2011/06/orwell-vs-god/
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|access-date =2 November 2017}}</ref> 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]] Holy Communion.<ref>Thomas Cushman and John Rodden eds., George Orwell: Into the Twenty-first Century (2004), p. 98</ref> Acknowledging this contradiction, he once said: "It seems rather mean to go to HC [Holy Communion] when one doesn't believe, but I have passed myself off for pious & there is nothing for it but to keep up with the deception."<ref>"Letter to Eleanor Jaques, 19 October 1932" in ''The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: An Age Like This'', ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus. Harcourt, Brace & World Inc. New York, 1968. p. 102</ref> He had two Anglican marriages and left instructions for an Anglican funeral.<ref>Why Orwell Matters (2003), p. 123</ref> Orwell was also extremely well-read in Biblical literature and could quote lengthy passages from the [[Book of Common Prayer]] from memory.<ref>A Patriot Ater All, 1940–1941, p. xxvi, Secker & Warburg 1998 {{ISBN|0436205408}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite web|last=Orwell|first=George|title=Such, Such Were the Joys|url=http://georgeorwellnovels.com/essays/such-such-were-the-joys/|access-date=23 November 2013|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140203141422/http://georgeorwellnovels.com/essays/such-such-were-the-joys/|archive-date=3 February 2014}}</ref> 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 (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 [[Albert Camus|Camus]]'s philosophy of perpetual godless struggle."<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/04/13/a-fine-rage|last=Wood|first=James|author-link=James Wood (critic)|title=A Fine Rage|magazine=[[The New Yorker]]|access-date=8 February 2017|date=13 April 2009}}</ref>
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Orwell's writing was often explicitly critical of religion, and Christianity in particular. He found the church to be a "selfish&nbsp;[...] 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.<ref name="Voorhees1986">{{cite book|last=Voorhees|first=Richard A.|title=The paradox of George Orwell|year=1986|publisher=Purdue University Press|location=West Lafayette, Ind|isbn=978-0911198805|pages=18–19}}</ref> 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.<ref>Stansky & Abrahams'', The Unknown Orwell'', p. 105</ref> Crick observed that Orwell displayed "a pronounced anti-Catholicism".<ref>Crick (1982), p. 229</ref> [[Evelyn Waugh]], 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."<ref>Quoted in ''Smothered Under Journalism'', Orwell: Collected Works, Vol. XVIII, p. 107</ref> 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".<ref name=autogenerated5>{{cite book|last=Ingle|first=Stephen|title=George Orwell: a political life|year=1993|publisher=Manchester University Press|location=Manchester, England|isbn=978-0719032332|page=110}}</ref>
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===Politics===
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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 ''[[The Road to Wigan Pier]]''. In his ''Adelphi'' days, he described himself as a "[[Tory]]-[[Anarchism|anarchist]]".<ref>{{Citation |first = Richard |last = Rees |title = Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory |publisher = Secker & Warburg |year = 1961}}</ref><ref>{{Citation |first = Rayner |last = Heppenstall |title = Four Absentees |publisher = Barrie & Rockcliff |year = 1960}}</ref> Of [[colonialism]] 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."
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In 1928, Orwell began his career as a professional writer in Paris at a journal owned by the French Communist [[Henri Barbusse]]. 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 de 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]]'' and ''[[Le Gaulois]]'', which the ''Ami de 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]] which would drive legitimate dailies out of business.<ref>{{Citation |first = P |last = Davison |title = A Kind of Compulsion |publisher = Secker & Warburg |place = London |year = 2000 |pages = 117–21}}</ref>
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Writing for ''Le Progrès Civique'', Orwell described the [[British Raj|British colonial government]] in Burma and India:
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{{Quote|"The government of all the Indian provinces under the control of the [[British Empire]] is of necessity despotic, because only the threat of force can subdue a population of several million subjects. But this despotism is latent. It hides behind a mask of democracy... Care is taken to avoid technical and industrial training. This rule, observed throughout India, aims to stop India from becoming an industrial country capable of competing with England&nbsp;... Foreign competition is prevented by an insuperable barrier of prohibitive customs tariffs. And so the English factory-owners, with nothing to fear, control the markets absolutely and reap exorbitant profits."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Orwell |first1=George |title=Comment on exploite un peuple: L'Empire britannique en Birmanie |trans-title=How a Nation Is Exploited – The British Empire in Burma |url=https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/how-a-nation-is-exploited-the-british-empire-in-burma/ |via=Orwell Foundation |journal=Le Progrès Civique |date=4 May 1929 |issue=CW 86 |translator1-first=Janet |translator1-last=Percival |translator2-first=Ian |translator2-last=Willison}}</ref>}}
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====Spanish Civil War and socialism====
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[[File:Logo of the Independent Labour Party.svg|alt=The letters "ISLP" in white on a red circle|thumb|upright|Orwell joined the British [[Independent Labour Party]] during his time in the [[Spanish Civil War]] and became a defender of [[democratic socialism]] and a critic of [[totalitarianism]] for the rest of his life.]]
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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."<ref>{{Citation |first = Cyril |last = Connolly |contribution = George Orwell 3 |title = The Evening Colonnade |publisher = David Bruce & Watson |year = 1973|title-link = The Evening Colonnade }}</ref><ref>{{Citation |title = The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters |first = George |last = Orwell |volume = 1&nbsp;– An Age Like This 1945–1950 |page = 301 |publisher = Penguin}}</ref> Having witnessed the success of the [[Anarcho-syndicalism|anarcho-syndicalist]] communities, for example in [[Anarchist Catalonia]], 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-[[Stalinism|Stalinist]] and joined the British [[Independent Labour Party]], his card being issued on 13 June 1938.<ref>Crick (1982), p. 364</ref> Although he was never a [[Trotskyism|Trotskyist]], 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]] and for [[democratic socialism]], as I understand it."<ref name=whyiwrite/> 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.<ref>{{cite book |last= Steele|first= David Ramsay|date= 20 July 2017|title= Orwell Your Orwell: A Worldview on the Slab|url= |location= |publisher= St. Augustines Press|page= |isbn= 978-1587316104|quote= For Orwell, socialism is a planned society by definition, as contrasted with capitalism, which is by definition unplanned. So closely was socialism identified with planning that socialists would sometimes use a phrase like 'a planned society' as a synonym for socialism, and Orwell himself does this too...Democracy too is part of Orwell's picture of socialism, though when he employs the term 'democracy,' he is usually referring to civil liberties rather than to decisions by majority vote – not that he rejects majoritarian rule, but that when he talks about 'democracy,' this is not uppermost in his mind.}}</ref> Orwell was a proponent of a federal socialist Europe, a position outlined in his 1947 essay "Toward European Unity", which first appeared in ''[[Partisan Review]]''. According to biographer [[John Newsinger]]:
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{{Quote|"The other crucial dimension to Orwell's socialism was his recognition that the Soviet Union was not socialist. Unlike many on the left, instead of abandoning socialism once he discovered the full horror of Stalinist rule in the Soviet Union, Orwell abandoned the Soviet Union and instead remained a socialist—indeed he became more committed to the socialist cause than ever."<ref name="newsinger"/>}}
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In his 1938 essay "Why I joined the Independent Labour Party," published in the ILP-affiliated ''[[Labour Leader|New Leader]]'', Orwell wrote:
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{{Quote |"For some years past I have managed to make the capitalist class pay me several pounds a week for writing books against capitalism. But I do not delude myself that this state of affairs is going to last forever&nbsp;... the only régime which, in the long run, will dare to permit freedom of speech is a Socialist régime. If Fascism triumphs I am finished as a writer—that is to say, finished in my only effective capacity. That of itself would be a sufficient reason for joining a Socialist party."<ref name="cejl1">''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 1&nbsp;– An Age Like This 1945–1950'' p. 373 (Penguin)</ref>}}
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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."<ref>"Why I Write" <!--shouldn't this be "Why I joined the Independent Labour Party"?-->in ''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 1&nbsp;– An Age Like This 1945–1950'' p. 374 (Penguin)</ref>
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====The Second World War====
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Orwell was opposed to rearmament against [[Nazi Germany]] and at the time of the [[Munich Agreement]] he signed a manifesto entitled "If War Comes We Shall Resist"<ref>{{cite news |title=The reluctant patriot: how George Orwell reconciled himself with England |url=https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/12/reluctant-patriot |work=New Statesman |date=6 January 2014 |access-date=3 February 2019 |archive-date=8 May 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210508171253/https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/12/reluctant-patriot |url-status=dead }}</ref>—but he changed his view after the [[Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact]] 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]]'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 [his] monstrous 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."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Orwell |first=George |url=https://bookmarks.reviews/george-orwells-1940-review-of-mein-kampf/ |title=George Orwell's 1940 Review of 'Mein Kampf' |date=21 March 1940 |work=New English Weekly |access-date=29 September 2021 }}</ref> 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".<ref>{{cite web |last = Collini |first =Stefan |title = E.H. Carr: Historian of the Future |work=The Times |location=UK |date=5 March 2008 |url = http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3490032.ece |access-date =9 November 2008}}</ref>
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In his reply (dated 15 November 1943) to an invitation from the [[Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl|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."<ref name="In Front of Your Nose">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)</ref>
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====''Tribune'' and post-war Britain====
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Orwell joined the staff of ''[[Tribune (magazine)|Tribune]]'' magazine as literary editor, and from then until his death, was a left-wing (though hardly orthodox) Labour-supporting democratic socialist.<ref name="Woodcock1984">{{Cite book|last=Woodcock|first=George|author-link=George Woodcock |title=The crystal spirit: a study of George Orwell|year=1967|publisher=Jonathan Cape|location=London|isbn=978-0947795054|page=247}}</ref>
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On 1 September 1944, writing about the [[Warsaw uprising]], 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."<ref name=autogenerated2>{{cite web|url=http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr276/newsinger.htm |title= John Newsinger in ''Socialist Review'' Issue 276 July/August 2003 |publisher=Pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk |access-date=21 October 2010}}</ref> Between 1945 and 1947, with [[A. J. Ayer]] and [[Bertrand Russell]], he contributed a series of articles and essays to ''[[Polemic (magazine)|Polemic]]'', a short-lived British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" edited by the ex-Communist [[Humphrey Slater]].<ref>Buckman, David (13 November 1998). [https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/arthistorical-notes-where-are-the-hirsts-of-the-1930s-now-1184514.html "Where are the Hirsts of the 1930s now?"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402125715/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/arthistorical-notes-where-are-the-hirsts-of-the-1930s-now-1184514.html |date=2 April 2015 }}. ''The Independent'' (London).</ref><ref name="Absent Minds">Collini, Stefan (2006). ''[https://archive.org/details/absentmindsintel00coll/page/396 Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain]''. Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|978-0199291052}}</ref>
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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".<ref>"Antisemitism in Britain", in ''As I Please: 1943–1945'', pp. 332–341.</ref> He wrote: "For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald.&nbsp;... 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."<ref>"[[Notes on Nationalism]]", 1945.</ref> In ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', written shortly after the war, Orwell portrayed the Party as enlisting anti-Semitic passions against their enemy, Goldstein.
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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.<ref>''In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse'', ''The Windmill'', No 2, July 1945, reprinted in Collected Works, ''I Belong to the Left'', pp. 51–61</ref>
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[[Special Branch (Metropolitan Police)|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".<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/sep/04/booksnews.nationalarchives|title=Odd clothes and unorthodox views – why MI5 spied on Orwell for a decade|last=Bates|first=Stephen|date=4 September 2007|newspaper=The Guardian|language=en|access-date=19 September 2018}}</ref> [[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."<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6976576.stm |title=MI5 confused by Orwell's politics |date=4 September 2007 |work=BBC News |access-date=22 November 2008}}</ref>
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===Sexuality===
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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]].<ref>[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/095892300102452 "We are the dead ... you are the dead". An examination of sexuality as a weapon of revolt in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four]. ''Journal of Gender Studies''. Retrieved 21 December 2018</ref> 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".<ref>[https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/nineteen-eighty-four-and-the-politics-of-dystopia “Nineteen Eighty-Four and the politics of dystopia”]. British Library. Retrieved 21 December 2018</ref>
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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."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Rodden|first1=John|title=Every Intellectual's Big Brother: George Orwell's Literary Siblings|date=2006|publisher=University of Texas Press, Austin|page=162|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UlnwITCGcw8C&pg=PA162|isbn=978-0292774537}}</ref>
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Orwell used the homophobic epithets "nancy" and "pansy", such in his 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 [[Stephen Spender]] and [[W. H. Auden]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Sharp|first1=Tony|title=W H Auden in Context|date=2013|publisher=Cambridge University Press|page=95}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Orwell|first1=George|title=Keep The Aspidistra Flying|year=1987|isbn=9780436350269|url=https://archive.org/details/keepaspidistrafl0000orwe|url-access=registration}}</ref> Stephen Spender "thought Orwell's occasional homophobic outbursts were part of his rebellion against the public school".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Bowker|first1=Gordon|title=George Orwell|year=2003|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780312238414|url-access=registration|isbn=978-0312238414}}</ref>
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==Biographies of Orwell==
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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''<ref name="autogenerated1968"/> as the record of his life. She did appoint [[Malcolm Muggeridge]] as official biographer, but later biographers have seen this as deliberate spoiling as Muggeridge eventually gave up the work.<ref name=autogenerated7>D.J. Taylor ''Orwell: The Life''. Henry Holt and Company. 2003. {{ISBN|0805074732}}</ref> In 1972, two American authors, Peter Stansky and William Abrahams,<ref>Peter Stansky and William Abrahams ''The Unknown Orwell'' Constable 1972</ref> produced ''The Unknown Orwell'', an unauthorised account of his early years that lacked any support or contribution from Sonia Brownell.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.darcymoore.net/2020/01/25/homage-stansky-abrahams-orwells-first-biographers/ |title=Homage to Stansky and Abrahams: Orwell's first biographers |date=24 January 2020 |access-date=23 July 2020 }}</ref>
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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.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> Crick collated a considerable amount of material in his work, which was published in 1980,<ref name="Crick-LBC"/> 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.vqronline.org/articles/1982/spring/meyers-wintry-conscience/ |title=VQR " Wintry Conscience |access-date=23 December 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081208143658/http://www.vqronline.org/articles/1982/spring/meyers-wintry-conscience/ |archive-date=8 December 2008}}</ref>
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After Sonia Brownell's death, other works on Orwell were published in the 1980s, particularly in 1984. These included collections of reminiscences by Coppard and Crick<ref name="autogenerated1984"/> and Stephen Wadhams.<ref name=Wadhams/>
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In 1991, [[Michael Shelden]], an American professor of literature, published a biography.<ref name=Shelden/> 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.<ref name="ReferenceA">Gordon Bowker&nbsp;– ''Orwell and the biographers'' in John Rodden ''The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell'' Cambridge University Press 2007</ref> Shelden speculated that Orwell possessed an obsessive belief in his failure and inadequacy.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.standard.co.uk/home/george-orwells-flawed-genius-7431522.html|title=George Orwell's flawed genius|work=Evening Standard|access-date=19 September 2018|language=en-GB}}</ref>
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[[Peter Davison (professor)|Peter Davison]]'s publication of the ''Complete Works of George Orwell'', completed in 2000,<ref>Peter Davison ''The Complete Works of George Orwell'' Random House, {{ISBN|0151351015}}</ref> 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<ref>Jeffrey Meyers ''Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation'' W.W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 2001 {{ISBN|0393322637}}</ref> that investigated the darker side of Orwell and questioned his saintly image.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> ''[[Why Orwell Matters]]'' (released in the United Kingdom as ''Orwell's Victory'') was published by [[Christopher Hitchens]] in 2002.<ref>Also see: {{cite web |last=Roberts |first=Russ |title=Hitchens on Orwell |url=http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_featuring/christopher_hit/ |work=[[EconTalk]] |publisher=[[Library of Economics and Liberty]] |author-link=Russ Roberts |date=17 August 2009 |access-date=14 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130402194513/http://www.econtalk.org/archives/_featuring/christopher_hit/ |archive-date=2 April 2013 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
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In 2003, the centenary of Orwell's birth resulted in biographies by [[Gordon Philip Bowker|Gordon Bowker]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.theorwellprize.co.uk/the-award/works/gordonbowker1.aspx |title=The Orwell Prize {{!}} Gordon Bowker: The Biography Orwell Never Wrote (essay) |archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20081206155331/http://www.theorwellprize.co.uk/the-award/works/gordonbowker1.aspx |archive-date=6 December 2008}}</ref> and [[D. J. Taylor]], both academics and writers in the United Kingdom. Taylor notes the stage management which surrounds much of Orwell's behaviour<ref name=Taylor/> and Bowker highlights the essential sense of decency which he considers to have been Orwell's main motivation.<ref>Bowker, George. ''George Orwell'' Little, Brown 2003</ref><ref>Review: ''Orwell by DJ Taylor and George Orwell by Gordon Bowker'' Observer on Sunday 1 June 2003</ref>
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==Bibliography==
 
==Bibliography==
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{{Main|George Orwell bibliography}}
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===Books===
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London/english/ ''Down and Out in Paris and London''] (1933)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Burmese_Days/ ''Burmese Days''] (1934)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/novels/A_Clergymans_Daughter/ ''A Clergyman's Daughter''] (1935)
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*''[[Keep the Aspidistra Flying]]'' (1936)<ref>http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Keep_the_Aspidistra_Flying/ </ref>
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/novels/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/ ''The Road to Wigan Pier''] (1937)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Homage_to_Catalonia/ ''Homage to Catalonia''] (1938)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Coming_up_for_Air/ ''Coming Up for Air''] (1939)
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*''[[Animal Farm]]'' (1945)
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*''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' (1949)
  
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===Novels===
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===Essays===
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* 1934&nbsp;– ''[[Burmese Days]]''
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*[http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/spike.htm ''The Spike''] (1931)
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* 1935&nbsp;– ''[[A Clergyman's Daughter]]''
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/articles/hanging/ '' A Hanging''] (1931)
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* 1936&nbsp;– ''[[Keep the Aspidistra Flying]]''
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/articles/elephant/ ''Shooting An Elephant''] (1936)
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* 1939&nbsp;– ''[[Coming Up for Air]]''
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/dickens/ ''Charles Dickens''] (1939)
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* 1945&nbsp;– ''[[Animal Farm]]''
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/essays/boys/ ''Boys' Weeklies''] (1940)
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* 1949&nbsp;– ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]''
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/essays/whale/ ''Inside The Whale''] (1940)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/ ''The Lion and The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius''] (1941)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/wells/ ''Wells, Hitler and the World State''] (1941)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/McGill/ ''The art of donald McGill''] (1941)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/essays/Spanish_War/ ''Looking back on the Spanish War''] (1943)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/yeats/ ''W. B. Yeats''] (1943)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/dali/ ''Benefit of Clergy: Some notes on Salvador Dali''] (1944)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/koestler/ ''Arthur Koestler''] (1944)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/ ''Notes on Nationalism''] (1945)
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*[http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/nicecupoftea.htm ''A Nice Cup of Tea''] (1946)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/articles/Poor_Die/ ''How The Poor Die''] (1946)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/swift/ ''Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels''] (1946)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/ ''Politics and the English Language''] (1946)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/burnham/ ''Second Thoughts on James Burnham''] (1946)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/articles/decline/ ''Decline of the English Murder''] (1946)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/articles/Common_Toad/ ''Some Thoughts on the Common Toad''] (1946)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/vicar/ ''A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray''] (1946)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/plum/ ''In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse''] (1946)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/ ''Why I Write''] (1946)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/essays/prevention/ ''The Prevention of Literature''] (1946)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/essays/joys/english/ ''Such, Such Were the Joys''] (1946)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/ ''Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool''] (1947)
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*[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/gandhi/ ''Reflections on Gandhi''] (1949)
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*[http://www.george-orwell.org/Bookshop_Memories/0.html ''Bookshop Memories''] (1936)
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*[http://www.whitebeertravels.co.uk/orwell ''The Moon Under Water''] (1946)
  
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===Nonfiction===
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===Poetry===
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* 1933&nbsp;– ''[[Down and Out in Paris and London]]''
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*Romance
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* 1937&nbsp;– ''[[The Road to Wigan Pier]]''
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*A Little Poem 
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* 1938&nbsp;– ''[[Homage to Catalonia]]''
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*Awake! Young Men of England
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*Kitchener
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*Our Minds are Married, But we are Too Young
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*The Pagan
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*The Lesser Evil
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*Poem From Burma
  
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==Notes==
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=== See Also ===
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{{Reflist |30em|group=n}}
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* [[Mystery:Did George Orwell Become a Conservative?]]
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* [[Big government]] [[Welfare state]] leads to [[Nanny state]], leads to [[Police state]]
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* [[Liberal totalitarianism]]
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* ''[[Brave New World]]'' by [[Aldous Huxley]]
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* ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' by George Orwell
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* ''[[We]]'' by Yevgeny Zamyatin
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* ''[[Animal Farm]]'' - [[Anti-Communist|anti-Stalinist]] "fairy story" by George Orwell
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* ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]'' by [[Ayn Rand]]
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* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,926380-6,00.html "That Year Is Almost Here"] by Paul Gray, ''Time'' Online.
  
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== References ==
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==References==
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{{Reflist}}
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{{reflist|1}}
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==Sources==
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{{refbegin|30em}}
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* Anderson, Paul (ed). ''Orwell in Tribune: 'As I Please' and Other Writings''. Methuen/Politico's 2006. {{ISBN|1842751557}}
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* [[Joxe Azurmendi|Azurmendi, Joxe]] (1984): George Orwell. 1984: Reality exists in the human mind, ''[[Jakin (magazine)|Jakin]]'', 32: 87–103.
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* [[Philip Bounds|Bounds, Philip.]] ''Orwell and Marxism: The Political and Cultural Thinking of George Orwell''. I.B. Tauris. 2009. {{ISBN|1845118073}}
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* [[Gordon Bowker (writer)|Bowker]], Gordon. ''George Orwell''. Little Brown. 2003. {{ISBN|0316861154}}
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* Buddicom, Jacintha. ''Eric & Us''. Finlay Publisher. 2006. {{ISBN|0955370809}}
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* Caute, David. ''Dr. Orwell and Mr. Blair'', Weidenfeld & Nicolson. {{ISBN|0297814389}}
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* [[Bernard Crick|Crick, Bernard]]. ''George Orwell: A Life''. Penguin. 1982. {{ISBN|0140058567}}
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* [[Peter Davison (professor)|Davison, Peter]]; Angus, Ian; Davison, Sheila (eds). 2000 ''A Kind of Compulsion''. London: Random House  {{ISBN|978-0436205422}}
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* Flynn, Nigel. ''George Orwell''. The Rourke Corporation, Inc. 1990. {{ISBN|086593018X}}
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* Haycock, David Boyd. ''I Am Spain: The Spanish Civil War and the Men and Women who went to Fight Fascism''. Old Street Publishing. 2013. {{ISBN|978-1908699107}}
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* [[Christopher Hitchens|Hitchens, Christopher]]. ''Why Orwell Matters''. Basic Books. 2003. {{ISBN|0465030491}}
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* Hollis, Christopher. ''A Study of George Orwell: The Man and His Works''. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co. 1956.
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* Larkin, Emma. ''Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop''. Penguin. 2005. {{ISBN|1594200521}}
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* Lee, Robert A, ''Orwell's Fiction''. University of Notre Dame Press, 1969. {{LCCN|74-75151}}
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* Leif, Ruth Ann, ''Homage to Oceania. The Prophetic Vision of George Orwell''. Ohio State U.P. [1969]
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* Meyers, Jeffery. ''Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation''. W.W. Norton. 2000. {{ISBN|0393322637}}
+
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* [[John Newsinger|Newsinger, John]]. ''Orwell's Politics''. Macmillan. 1999. {{ISBN|0333682874}}
+
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* {{Citation |title = The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters |first = George |last = Orwell |volume = 1&nbsp;– An Age Like This 1945–1950 |publisher = Penguin}}.
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* {{cite book|last=Rodden|first=John|title=George Orwell: The Politics of Literary Reputation|edition=2002 revised|year=1989|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|isbn= 978-0765808967}}
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* Rodden, John (ed.) ''The Cambridge Companion to George Orwell''. Cambridge. 2007. {{ISBN|978-0521675079}}
+
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* [[Michael Shelden|Shelden, Michael]]. ''Orwell: The Authorized Biography''. HarperCollins. 1991. {{ISBN|0060167092}}
+
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* Smith, D. & Mosher, M. ''Orwell for Beginners''. 1984. London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative.
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* [[D. J. Taylor|Taylor, D. J.]] ''Orwell: The Life''. Henry Holt and Company. 2003. {{ISBN|0805074732}}
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* West, W. J. ''The Larger Evils''. Edinburgh: Canongate Press. 1992. {{ISBN|0862413826}} (Nineteen Eighty-Four&nbsp;– The truth behind the satire.)
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* West, W. J. (ed.) ''George Orwell: The Lost Writings''. New York: Arbor House. 1984. {{ISBN|0877957452}}
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* [[Raymond Williams|Williams, Raymond]], ''Orwell'', Fontana/Collins, 1971
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* Wood, James "A Fine Rage." ''The New Yorker''. 2009. 85(9):54.
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* [[George Woodcock|Woodcock, George]]. ''The Crystal Spirit''. Little Brown. 1966. {{ISBN|1551642689}}
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==Further reading==
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* Morgan, W. John, 'Pacifism or Bourgeois Pacifism? Huxley, Orwell, and Caudwell'. Chapter 5 in Morgan, W. John and Guilherme, Alexandre (Eds.), ''Peace and War-Historical, Philosophical, and Anthropological Perspectives'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp, 71–96. {{ISBN|978-3-030-48670-9}}.
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* Orwell, George. ''Diaries'', edited by [[Peter Davison (professor)|Peter Davison]] ([[W. W. Norton & Company]]; 2012) 597 pages; annotated edition of 11 diaries kept by Orwell, from August 1931 to September 1949.
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* {{cite encyclopedia |last1=Steele |first1= David Ramsay|author-link1= David Ramsay Steele|editor-first=Ronald |editor-last=Hamowy |editor-link=Ronald Hamowy |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism |chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC|year=2008 |publisher= [[SAGE Publications|Sage]]; [[Cato Institute]] |location= Thousand Oaks, CA |doi=10.4135/9781412965811.n224 |isbn= 978-1412965804 |oclc=750831024| lccn = 2008009151 |pages=366–68 |chapter= Orwell, George (1903–1950)}}
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* Ostrom, Hans and Halton, William. ''Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" in the Age of Pseudocracy'' (New York: Routledge, 2018) {{ISBN|978-1138499904}}
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* Wilson, S.M and Huxtable, J. Such, ''"Such Were the Joys: graphic novel"'' (London: Pluto Press, Sept 2021) {{ISBN|978-0745345925}}
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* [https://librivox.org/author/1537 Works by George Orwell - text and free audio] - [[LibriVox]]
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* [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31915 Blair, Eric Arthur (George Orwell) (1903–1950) at the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'']
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* [https://www.bl.uk/people/george-orwell George Orwell] at the [[British Library]]
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Revision as of 22:21, March 4, 2022

George Orwell (Eric Blair)

George Orwell is the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair (June 25, 1903 - January 21, 1950), a leading and open-minded English writer, essayist and journalist who became critical of his ideological allies on the Left. He hated imperialism[1] and grew more conservative, adopting and raising a child and becoming a member of the Church of England.[2] The tension between the increasingly conservative Orwell and the perception of him as a democratic socialist may account for some of his interesting word inventions like "doublethink". Because of his prominent liberal past, Orwell's conservative writings were accepted and praised by the clueless liberal intelligentsia. By the time Orwell adopted an infant in 1944, he was an outspoken opponent of abortion,[3] which may have accelerated his anti-communist work.

"Orwellian" is a term in tribute of his mockery of political attempts to control and redefine terminology.

Unlike most writers, Orwell's greatest works came late in his life. He harshly criticized communism and totalitarianism in 1984, his finest novel, as well as in his shorter fictional work Animal Farm (1946), an allegorical reference to the Russian Revolution. These works were far more significant than his first novel, based on his experiences on the Imperial Police Force in Burma, Burmese Dаys, which explored the evils of coloniаlism. His highly influential essay, "Politics and the English Language," attacked the liberal obfuscation which was already present in his day, and championed clear speech.

The inspiration for Orwell's growth into conservatism remains unexplored. Likely reasons include his open-mindedness, his adopting and then raising (due to his wife's untimely death) a child, and his disillusionment with Leftists while fighting on their side in Spain.

Biography

Orwell's political views began to move away from the far left when he volunteered to fight the Spanish Nationalist forces to keep them from overturning the Soviet-backed revolutionary socialist government of Spain[4] in the Spаnish Civil War (1936-1939). He enlisted in the POUM (In English, Workers Party for Marxist Unity) Militia, and saw action on the Aragon front, where he fought side by side with Anаrchists and Communists, as well as Republican regulars.

He became disillusioned with the Spanish government's policy of withholding arms from the POUM and the Anarchists, which he saw as an attempt by the Communists to water down the revolutionary nature of the Anti-Fascist resistance, and centralize power in the hands of the Moscow-backed Communist Party. Taking a bullet through his neck but surviving, Orwell was invalided to Barcelona, where he witnessed the Stalinist repression of Trotskyist and Anarchist parties. Orwell and his wife were forced to escape from Spain as fugitives, after the POUM was banned by the increasingly repressive regime.

Despite his persecution, Orwell initially continued to support the Republic upon his return to England, viewing a Communist-dominated Spain as better than a Nationalist Spain. He recounted his experiences in Spain in the book Homage to Catalonia.[5] He remained a socialist, and was for a time in the late 1930s a member of the Independent Labour Party, although he split from the ILP over its opposition to World War II. Orwell served in the Home Guаrd during the war.

In 1941, Orwell wrote his essay The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, in which he summarized Britain's wartime situation, and expressed his political opinions. He called for a particularly English form of socialism, which would democratically replace the capitalist model and create a fairer society, while being informed by the most attractive English characteristics, such as love of privacy and law abidance.

Orwell had only ten years left in his life when he returned. During that period he and his wife adopted a baby boy (in 1944), but Orwell's wife unexpectedly died shortly thereafter.

In those ten years Orwell wrote his famous anti-Communist fictional works, demonstrating how much his views had moved to the right from his youth. First he spent three years writing Animаl Farm (1944), and then perhaps five years on the longer novel 1984 (1949). Orwell continued to espouse forms of socialism[6] right up to his death, but utilized his position as a regular columnist for the left-labor Tribune paper to strongly criticize the USSR. Such criticism was unusual for a left-winger of the period, but Orwell was so well respected that his position was secure. "I belong to the left and must work with it," he declared in 1945.[7] He died of tuberculosis in 1950.

Quotes

  • "In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
  • "For the future. For the unborn."
  • "Truth is treason in an empire of lies."
  • "In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia."[8]
  • In England of the last thirty years, it has seemed all too natural [unfortunately] ... that abortion, theoretically illegal, should be looked upon as a mere peccadillo.”[9]
  • “All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.”
  • “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”[10]
  • "To this day it gives me a faint feeling of sacrilege not to stand to attention during ‘God save the King’. That is childish, of course, but I would sooner have had that kind of upbringing than be like the left-wing intellectuals who are so ‘enlightened’ that they cannot understand the most ordinary emotions."[12]
  • "It is all very well to be 'advanced' and 'enlightened,' to snigger at Colonel Blimp and proclaim your emancipation from all traditional loyalties, but a time comes when the sand of the desert is sodden red and what have I done for thee, England, my England? As I was brought up in this tradition myself I can recognise it under strange disguises, and also sympathise with it, for even at its stupidest and most sentimental it is a comelier thing than the shallow self-righteousness of the left-wing intelligentsia."[13]
  • "One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist and feminist in England."[14]
  • "The truth is that to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we,' the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them,' the Lower Orders."[15]
  • "[T]he intellectual, book-trained Socialist... is drawn... entirely from... a rootless town-bred section of the middle class.... [I]t includes—so much so that to an outsider it even appears to be composed of—... the foaming denouncers of the bourgeoisie, and the more-water-in-your-beer reformers of whom Shaw is the prototype, and the astute young social-literary climbers who are Communists now, as they will be Fascists five years hence, because it is all the go, and all that dreary tribe of highminded women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come flocking towards the smell of 'progress' like bluebottles to a dead cat."[16]
  • "If only the sandals and pistachio-colored shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaler and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly. As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."[17]
  • "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable'.... Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism?"[18]
  • "[T]here is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of Western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States."[19]
  • "Fifteen years ago, when one defended the freedom of the intellect, one had to defend it against Conservatives, against Catholics, and to some extent—for they were not of great importance in England—against Fascists. Today one has to defend it against Communists and ‘fellow travellers’"[20]
  • "War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it."
  • "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."
  • "Up to 1930 I did not on the whole look upon myself as a Socialist. In fact I had as yet no clearly defined political views. I became pro-Socialist more out of disgust with the way the poorer section of the industrial workers were oppressed and neglected than out of any theoretical admiration for a planned society."[22]
  • "I have no particular love for the idealized 'worker' as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on."
  • "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

Bibliography

Books

Essays

Poetry

  • Romance
  • A Little Poem
  • Awake! Young Men of England
  • Kitchener
  • Our Minds are Married, But we are Too Young
  • The Pagan
  • The Lesser Evil
  • Poem From Burma

See Also

References

  1. ↑ "I went to Burma and joined the Indian Imperial Police. This was an armed police, a sort of gendarmerie very similar to the Spanish Guardia Civil or the Garde Mobile in France. I stayed five years in the service. It did not suit me and made me hate imperialism" [1]
  2. ↑ "There are nevertheless four aspects of Orwell's later work which are more closely linked to conservative than to left-wing styles of thinking." [2]
  3. ↑ https://www.crisismagazine.com/2004/why-george-orwell-was-pro-life-2
  4. ↑ "Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the opening of state archives in Moscow, scholarship has considerably darkened the view of the Communist role in Republican Spain.... [The] Spanish government... was in no serious sense democratic.... [I]t was composed largely of revolutionary parties that showed no willingness to allow the right wing a political future in Spain, and it was extremely brutal in its treatment of clerics, landowners, and suspected Fascists.... [It] was probably headed toward Soviet-style totalitarianism before Franco ever launched his rebellion.... Stalin was among the Spanish government’s first arms suppliers of choice." George Packer, "The Spanish Prisoner," The New Yorker, October 31, 2005. Cf. Stanley G. Payne, The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism (Yale University Press, 2004) ISBN 030010068X
  5. ↑ [3]
  6. ↑ [4]
  7. ↑ http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/document.html?id=1391
  8. ↑ http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
  9. ↑ From Orwell's essay The English People (1944).
  10. ↑ George Orwell in 1984
  11. ↑ George Orwell, "Review, The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek," The London Observer, April 9, 1944, reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 3: As I Please, 1943-1945 (London: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000) ISBN 1567921353, p. 118
  12. ↑ George Orwell, "My Country, Right or Left," New Folios of Writing, Autumn 1940, reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 1: An age like this, 1920-1940 (London: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000) ISBN 1567921337, p. 540
  13. ↑ George Orwell, "The Limit to Pessimism," New English Weekly, April 25, 1940, reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 1: An age like this, 1920-1940 (London: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000) ISBN 1567921337, p. 535
  14. ↑ George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), p. 115
  15. ↑ George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), p. 119
  16. ↑ George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), p. 121
  17. ↑ George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), p. 147
  18. ↑ George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," Horizon, vol. 13, issue 76 (April 1946), reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 4: In Front of Your Nose, 1946-1950 (London: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000) ISBN 1567921337, pp. 132-139
  19. ↑ George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism," Polemic, October 1945, reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 3: As I Please, 1943-1945 (London: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000) ISBN 1567921353, p. 374
  20. ↑ George Orwell, "The Prevention of Literature," Polemic, No. 2 (January 1946), reprinted in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 4: In Front of Your Nose, 1946-1950 (London: David R. Godine Publisher, 2000) ISBN 1567921361, p. 62
  21. ↑ Huneke, Samuel (February 16, 2016). Stanford professor uncovers roots of George Orwell's political language. Stanford. Retrieved June 25, 2017.
  22. ↑ http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/articles/ukrainian-af-pref.htm
  23. ↑ http://orwell.ru/library/novels/Keep_the_Aspidistra_Flying/

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