George Orwell

The writer

George Orwell was born Eric Blair in 1903 in Bengal and grew up in England. He excelled academically and received a scholarship to a preparatory school – which he hated – and then to Eton. The experience of working for the Indian Imperial Police in Burma taught him to detest imperialism and he soon resigned and returned to England. In 1933 he chose a pen name that stressed his deep, lifelong affection for English tradition and landscape. George is the patron saint of England, and the River Orwell in Suffolk was one of his most beloved places.

Orwell lived for several years in poverty, sometimes homeless, sometimes doing itinerant work, and suffered from ill health from this point onwards. Soon after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he volunteered to fight for the Republicans and subsequently wrote Homage to Catalonia. During World War II he was a member of the Home Guard. In 1941 he began work for the BBC Eastern Service and in 1943 became literary editor of Tribune, the left-wing weekly paper.

In 1944 Orwell finished Animal Farm. From 1945 Orwell was The Observer’s war correspondent and later contributed regularly to the Manchester Evening News. In 1949 his best-known work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, was published. He died soon afterwards of tuberculosis, aged just 46.

Claire Reed.
Club de lectura en Anglès.