Burma Sahib: A Personal (Re)View

It was with great expectation that I sat down to read Paul Theroux’s latest novel, Burma Sahib, the story of Eric Blair’s experience as a colonial policeman during the 1920s. A much experienced and admired master of the art of travel writing, who better to breathe life into the historical setting, landscape and people of the period? […]

Orwell’s Scottish Ancestry

“… sufficient evidence remains to be able to assert with confidence that Orwell was in male line descent from Alexander de Blair who flourished in the first half of the 13th century.”                                               […]

Lost Orwell BBC Radio Transcript Found in India

George Orwell was employed in the Indian Section of the BBC’s Eastern Service during World War Two but no recording of his voice has survived. A cache of his BBC radio scripts was discovered forty years ago – but many are still lost.  My lengthy list of ideas to pursue, people and sites to visit […]

Orwell’s Family: Aunt Nellie

“Miss Elaine Limouzin’s recital at the Salle Erard on Thursday evening, May 4th, drew a large audience, which thoroughly appreciated the very agreeable entertainment… Miss Limouzin has an effective way of writing drolleries for herself, and her bright fun in telling one of her own pieces – “Henry Sees Life” – an account of a […]

“Eros with Chilblains”

In 1930, Ruth Pitter (1897-1992) wrote a comic poem parodying her relationship with the man who was to become George Orwell. “Eros with Chilblains”, Pitter’s ironic reaction to Eric Blair’s attempts at seduction, remained unpublished in her lifetime. Ruth Pitter’s observations of Eric Blair’s struggle to become a writer, during the period 1927-33, make her […]

Orwell & La Tribune Indochinoise

Why were two of the earliest pieces of Orwell’s journalism, written in Paris during the late 1920s when he was still E.-A. Blair, published by a newspaper in Saigon?  E.-A. Blair published four personal essays in a left-wing weekly Parisian newspaper, Le Progrès Civique: Journal de Perfectionnement Social, during 1928-1929. Three of the articles explored poverty […]

Orwell: the Map & the Territory

“Once a biographer has mastered his subject, sucked it dry as an ant does an aphid and stored its own juice in his own book, the rest of us need no longer bother our heads about inconvenient notions the biographer’s subject may have offered for our consideration.”   Germaine Greer “A map is not the territory […]

Eric, Cini & Tom

“When Eric returned to England in 1927, he spent a fortnight with Auntie Lilian at Ticklerton, where Prosper and Guiny were then staying. But completely unavoidable circumstances prevented me from joining the party.”     Jacintha Buddicom, Eric & Us (1974)                                  […]

E. Limouzin

“I have begun the Chartreuse de Parme, but have read only a few pages as yet, for I saw a reference in some work to The Prince and, as I had never read it, I have begun that also and am about half way through it. I suppose you have read it long ago, probably […]

Orwell & the Earl of Cardigan

“She was the mistress of a peer of the Realm for over thirty years but would not marry him when the subject was raised because his intellect was not, apparently, equal to his sex drive.”  Eric & Us (2006) Eric Blair, better known by his pen-name George Orwell, proposed marriage on more than one occasion […]

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