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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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)                                  […]

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Orwell in Cornwall

While holidaying in Cornwall with his family during the summer of 1927, Eric Blair announced his intention to quit a well-paid job with the Indian Imperial Police to become a writer. Six years later he published his first book as George Orwell. This was not the first time the Blair family had holidayed in Cornwall […]

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Orwell & Van Gogh

“I want this one to be a work of art, & that can’t be done without much bloody sweat.”                                                                         […]

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Orwell & Empire by Douglas Kerr*

Orwell & Empire Douglas Kerr Oxford University Press, 2022, pp 240 ISBN: 978 0 192 86409 3 Once there was a British writer, an Englishman who was born in India. He was privately educated in England, did not go to university, returned to the East after leaving school, and lived and worked there for a […]

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A Tribute to Professor Peter Davison

“It would be dishonest of me not to feel pleasure and, indeed, pride, when I see the twenty volumes of The Complete Works and the facsimile of the manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four on my shelves.”                                         […]

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MISCELLANY

Reading widely about Orwell’s life and times has led me to collect all sorts of books which contextualised his work and times; including tomes written by his friends or the milieu he associated. The connection will not always be readily apparent as you skim and scan down this page but I do intend to make […]

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INDIA & BURMA

INDIA & BURMA Orwell and his parents were culturally Anglo-Indians. He was born in India and served for five years in Burma as an Assistant District Superintendent in the Indian Imperial Police. The centrality of the sub-continent to Orwell’s cultural, professional and imaginative identity can be observed throughout his life and work. He published Burmese […]

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BOOKS REVIEWED BY ORWELL (OR INFLUENCING HIM)

“The best practice, it has always seemed to me, would be simply to ignore the great majority of books and to give very long reviews – 1,000 words is a bare minimum – to the few that seem to matter.” George Orwell, Confessions of a Book Reviewer Orwell was a working journalist, essayist and book […]

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MONOGRAPHS ABOUT ORWELL

MONOGRAPHS ABOUT ORWELL Anytime I saw a book about Orwell, in the library or secondhand, I read it. My collection grew. Quite a few of the following reference works are immaculately preserved first editions, although they have no great monetary value it is their content and the assemblage of so many resources in my library […]

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SEARCHLIGHT BOOKS

SEARCHLIGHT BOOKS The Searchlight Books series was edited by T. R. Fyvel and George Orwell and published by Secker & Warburg during 1941-1942. The distinctive cover image was designed by political cartoonist, Philip Zec. The series of 128 page essays was promoted by explaining that: The books will be written in simple language without the rubber-stamp political jargon of […]

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PERIODICALS

PERIODICALS It is exciting to collect the original ‘little magazines’ where Orwell published his most famous essays and articles as well as the less well-known contributions made to periodicals during his working career as a journalist in the 1930s and 40s. He contributed to many varied, often short-lived, literary publications. I have not managed to […]

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ADAPTATIONS AND APPROPRIATIONS

ADAPTATIONS & APPROPRIATIONS Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm have often been adapted for radio, film, television, theatre, opera and even ballet.  Now that Orwell’s books have fallen out of copyright (in the UK) a spate of quality graphic novels are flooding the market. Animal Farm was adapted by Orwell himself as a radio drama for the […]

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ORWELL’S FICTION AND NON FICTION

FICTION & NON FICTION The Complete Works of George Orwell (CWGO) Peter Davison edited The Complete Works of George Orwell, a twenty-volume collection that includes Orwell’s standard published library and eleven chronological volumes of non fiction* with a further supplementary book of ‘lost works’ published a decade later. I had managed to collect all but four of these volumes – Keep the […]

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ORWELL STUDIES LIBRARY

ORWELL STUDIES LIBRARY The first Orwell I owned was a battered copy of Down and Out in Paris and London found in a secondhand bookstore for $1.25. It is still on my shelf. Originally published in 1933, it was Orwell’s first book and little did I realised how closely I would (and continue) to study it. […]

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Such, Such Were The Joys

“As for St Cyprian’s, for years I loathed its very name so deeply that I could not view it with enough detachment to see the significance of the things that happened to me there. In a way it is only within the last decade that I have really thought over my schooldays, vividly though their […]

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Poverty and the True Artist

…Saturday evenings in Paris, when we took turns about the dinner, and the hours of good talk later in my little cluttered place in rue de la Grande Chaumière. You showed me sketches of your experiences – some of the material I recognised when Down and Out in Paris and London came out. Perhaps I […]

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Cini & The Beast

In an effort to set the record straight about the boyhood of one of the twentieth century’s most significant writers, Jacintha Buddicom published Eric & Us, a recollection of her early life with Eric Blair, better known by his pseudonym, George Orwell. However, Orwell was not the only friend who gained iconic, popular cultural renown. […]

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Orwell in Paris: François Villon

François Villon had, I suppose, as rough a time as any poet in our own day, and the literary man starving in a garret was one of the characteristic figures of the eighteenth century Orwell, Tribune, 8 September 1944 Three weeks after arriving in Paris, with the romantic goal of finding subjects and inspiration for […]

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Orwell in Paris: Under Surveillance

The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) spied on George Orwell (aka Eric Blair) during 1929 when he lived in Paris. The report was written by an intelligence officer codenamed “V.V.” who had, like Blair, commenced his career in the Indian Imperial Police and was later to approve the recruitment of notorious double agent, Kim Philby. . […]

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ABOUT & PUBLICATIONS

Thanks for visiting my website. My partner and I live with our two teenagers and a schnauzer in sunny Kiama, NSW, Australia. I have been blogging for over 20 years and this particular iteration has been live for more than 15 years. The focus has changed (and continues to change) as I find new interests to […]

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