BBC World Histories - 10.2019 - 11.2019

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair was born in Motihari,

north-east India on 25 June 1903, and

grew up in England. After graduating

from Eton College, he spent five years

in the Imperial Police in Burma (now

Myanmar), which left him with a keen

sense of political outrage and personal

guilt. He drifted between journal-

ism, tramping and menial jobs, which

informed his first book

Down and Out

in Paris and London

(1933), published

under the pseudonym George Orwell.

During the 1930s, he published four

novels and two more works of non-

fiction. The Road to Wigan Pier

(1937)

examined working-class life in the

north of England, while

Homage to

Catalonia (1938) described his experi-

ences in the Spanish Civil War.

Classified unfit for military ser-

vice in the Second World War, Orwell

worked for the BBC’s Indian Section

for two years. Upon leaving the BBC in

1943, he joined the left-wing magazine

Tribune, wrote

Animal Farm (1945) and

adopted a son, Richard Blair. In 1945,

while Orwell was working as a war

reporter in Europe, his wife Eileen died

suddenly. The following year, Orwell

moved to Jura in the Inner Hebrides,

and began writing

Nineteen Eighty-Four

.

Delayed because of Orwell’s journalism

commitments and hospitalisation for

tuberculosis, the book was published

on 8 June 1949. This dystopian novel

is set in a year (which may or may not

be 1984) in what was then the future in

Airstrip One (Britain), now part of Oce-

ania, one of three warring superstates.

The totalitarian ruling Party – whose

leader, Big Brother, is the centre of a

powerful personality cult, even though

he may not exist – exerts total control

over both actions and thoughts, con-

stantly monitoring Oceania’s people

and rewriting history to match present

political requirements.

Orwell married Sonia Brownell in

October 1949 in hospital in London,

where he died on 21 January 1950.

The history behind 1984

Future imperfect

Eric Blair, who wrote under

the pen name George

Orwell. His experiences in

Burma fuelled his disdain

for imperialism, but he also

witnessed the pitfalls of

socialist regimes

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