George Orwell

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George Orwell  link Amazon NNDB Sourcewatch (Author, journalist,spook)
Born	Eric Arthur Blair 25 June 1903 Motihari, Bengal Presidency, British India
Died	21 January 1950 University College Hospital, London, England
Cause of death	tuberculosis
Resting place	Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, England
Nationality	English
Citizenship	UK
Alma mater	Eton College
Children	Richard Horatio Blair
Spouses	Eileen O'Shaughnessy, Sonia Brownell
Interests	Information Research Department
Party	Independent Labour, (from 1938)
Globally acclaimed author whose works include the hauntingly prescient 1984

Eric Arthur Blair known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, critic- and spook. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and commitment to democratic socialism.

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“[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet.”
 (31 December 1943) 

File:George Orwell vs Aldous Huxley - w0ixjd.png

The fears of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley.

Commonly ranked as one of the most influential English writers of the 20^th century and as one of the most important chroniclers of English culture of his generation, Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945). His book Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, is widely acclaimed, as are his numerous essays on politics, literature, language, and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Orwellian language

Full article: Orwellian language

Orwell's work continues to influence popular and political culture, and the term "Orwellian" — descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices — has entered the language together with several of his neologisms, including "cold war", "Big Brother", "thought police", "Room 101", "doublethink", "newspeak" and "thoughtcrime".

Orwell's Blacklist

In May 1949, George Orwell compiled a blacklist of 38 names, which he gave to Celia Kirwan, who worked for the British government’s Information Research Department, an MI6 anti-communist propaganda unit set up for the Cold War. The names included Charlie Chaplin, J. B. Priestley, Michael Redgrave and others, whom Orwell suggested should not be trusted by the IRD as anti-communist propagandists.”

Orwell knew the destination of the list, and “was very anxious to keep the list hidden,” adding that “I don’t suppose it will tell your friends anything they don’t know,” and reflecting that, although the IRD probably had tabs on the subjects already, “it isn’t a bad idea to have people who are probably unreliable listed.”

The story first broke in 1996. In 2003 the British government released the document to Timothy Garton Ash, a historian who is reliably on the government message, presumably as a reward for good teamwork in other cases.

Publications

George Orwell published many popular novels and narrative essays.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Full article: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four may be widely considered pre-eminent amongst Orwell's books. Completed in 1948, it was published in June 1949. Perhaps remarkably for such a pessimistic book, it received immediate critical and popular acclaim. The central character, Winston Smith, works in the Ministry of Truth, censoring pieces of history. While charting his failed efforts at resistance, the novel paints a dystopian picture of a totalitarian future in which a tiny elite pursue (the party) pursue a policy of perpetual war and mass surveillance while seeking to exert an ever tighter control over the minds of the proletariat ("the proles").

File:Orwell right.jpg

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“The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.”
George Orwell

One of the central themes is the use of propagandistic language. The book is full of new words (newspeak), which are used to shape the opinions of the proles.

Death

In December 1947 Orwell was diagnosed with tuberculosis. On 21 January 1950, an artery burst in his lungs, killing him at age 46.

References

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