George Orwell’s ambivalent relationship with his Anglo-Indian heritage is mostly discussed in the context of critiquing his writing set in Burma or when considering why he joined the Indian Imperial Police as a teenager (and his resignation five years later). Burmese Days, his ‘crisp, fierce, and almost boisterous attack on the Anglo-Indian’; The Road to […]
“On being demobilised in 1945—having by then lived through the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Second World War—I found that my social conscience was sufficiently blunted to allow me to consider devoting my whole time to painting, which I had already toyed with as a sort of occupational therapy in 1935–6; […]
A happy vicar I might have been Two hundred years ago, To preach upon eternal doom And watch my walnuts grow; But born, alas, in an evil time, I missed that pleasant haven, For the hair has grown on my upper lip And the clergy are all clean-shaven. (The Adelphi, December 1936) A Clergyman’s Daughter, […]
Why did George Orwell join the Indian Imperial Police? He told Sonia Brownell – who was curious as to why her husband pursued this career rather than ‘Oxbridge’ – that it was a ‘long and complicated story’. He died before answering her question. The careers of two uncles, George Limouzin (1881-1977) and Arthur Blair (1846-1879), […]
“I was working in Southwold, but my home was at Bedford. What we used to do mostly was to go for long walks, talking – discussing books, like Ulysses, and he would rail against Roman Catholicism … He really felt he ought to get down and really know what life was like without anything so […]
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 […]
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 […]
‘The rat,’ said O’Brien, still addressing his invisible audience, ‘although a rodent is carnivorous. You are aware of that. You will have heard of the things that happen in the poor quarters of this town. In some streets a woman dare not leave her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes. The rats […]
“I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject-matter will be determined by the age he lives in—at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own—but before he ever begins to write he will have […]