In just 47 years of life, George Orwell (real name Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950) managed to do a great deal: he was taught French by Aldous Huxley, met the later great historian/Byzantinologist Stephen Runciman, met and managed to enrage H.G. Wells, a writer he admired, had lunch with Henry Miller, who called him a 'fool', married twice, adopted a baby boy, and took part in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 - where he was seriously wounded in the neck by a sniper shot and returned to England in disappointment, because while he thought he was fighting Franco for the Republic, he ended up caught between the communists, Trotskyists and Catalan socialists.
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One of the most celebrated classics of the twentieth century, this cautionary tale of a man trapped under the gaze of an authoritarian state is more relevant now than ever before. “Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever. You mi... SEE MORE