hated school
When Orwell was one year old, he moved to England with his mother and sister, Marjorie. The future writer spent five years in St. He attended Cyprian’s private primary school for boys in Eastbourne. Thirty years later, in his essay “On the Joy of Childhood,” Orwell called the school “snobby” and its owners “terrible monsters of unlimited power.”
“St. Cyprian’s was an expensive and snobby school, in the process of getting even more snobby and possibly even more expensive,” he wrote.
According to Orwell, shortly after starting school, he began to urinate involuntarily due to stress, which was considered a “heinous crime” and punishable by whipping. It is assumed that the author exaggerated the school suffering described in the work. The article was called slander and was published only after the author’s death in 1968.
served in the police
Orwell served in the colonial police force in Burma from 1922 to 1927. There, he collected the texture of his first novel, Days in Burma, in which he reflected on the injustice of imperialism. Orwell also wrote the stories “How I Shot the Elephant” and “The Execution by Hanging” based on his memoirs of the ministry. He left the military in 1927 and devoted himself to writing.
poverty in Europe
After the service, Orwell traveled to Europe, where he lived through odd jobs, and also wrote fiction and journalism. Gathering material for his book Pounds of Dash in Paris and London, he worked as a dishwasher in Paris and a hop collector in a brewery in Kent.
fake arrest
In 1931, Orwell rigged his arrest to investigate life in prison for his book Pounds of Dash in Paris and London. According to biographer Gordon Bowker, the author wanted to “get a taste of prison and get closer to the vagrants and petty criminals he found himself in his society.” To do this, he drank a lot of alcohol and, disguised as a poor loader, caused a scandal in a public place. But Orwell failed to make it to jail: he was detained for 48 hours and released. However, this experience was useful for the “Clink” article.
He received a nickname in honor of the river
Since 1933, the author has been publishing under a pseudonym in honor of the River Orwell, which flows in the eastern part of Great Britain. There is a place on the coast where he likes to spend time.
injured in Spain
In 1936 Orwell and his wife Eileen went to Spain, where the civil war began. He planned to contribute to the “fight against fascism” with several newspaper articles, but later volunteered in the ranks of the Republic. Six months later, a Francoist sniper stabbed Orwell in the neck. He described this experience in his book “Memory of Catalonia”:
“I felt a sharp push – not pain, only a strong blow, reminiscent of electric shock, when suddenly you touch bare wires; and at the same time a nasty weakness caught me – I seemed to be entangled in the void.
Predicted modern technologies and processes in society
In the dystopia of “1984” you can find many processes and technologies used today. So he described telescreens in the novel, which are large televisions through which officials relay messages and observe citizens. Televisions and other devices that listen to the speech of their owners and support facial recognition programs can be considered analogues of telescreens. The author also envisioned speech-to-text technology, the creation of artificial islands, writing news and pictures using artificial intelligence, and Yenispeak.
Invented the terms “Big Brother” and “Cold War”
Orwell’s article “You and the Atomic Bomb” was the first to use the term “cold war” to describe the relationship between the USA and the USSR. The piece was written two months after the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the essay, Orwell described the state as “invincible but still in a constant state of cold war with its neighbors”. He also stated that because of their high cost and rarity, atomic bombs would end large-scale wars, instead indefinitely expanding “a world that is not really a world”.
The author also invented such well-known words and phrases as the thought police, Big Brother, room 101, think double, two minutes of hate, memory hole, ministry of truth, and 2 + 2 = 5.
The ‘Animal Farm’ manuscript could have been destroyed by a bomb
In 1944, a German V-1 cruise missile destroyed Orwell’s London home. The author was not in the room at the time with his wife Eileen and son Richard. Orwell was working for the Tribune at the time and spent his lunch breaks searching the ruins for his notes and books, including the manuscript of Animal Farm. Orwell’s son mentioned this in an interview with Ham & High newspaper.
“He spent hours shoveling the trash,” Richard shared, “luckily he found it.”
He kept a goat named Muriel
Orwell looked after several pets while living with his wife in Wallington. The author even mentions his favorite goat, Muriel, in Animal Farm. He describes the goat as one of the smartest and neatest farm animals. In the archives of University College London there is a famous 1939 photograph of Orwell feeding his goat.
Charlie accused Chaplin and Bernard Shaw of allegiance to communism
In 1949 Orwell, who saw himself as a socialist-democrat, compiled on his own initiative a list of people who were not recommended to work in the British Information Research Department because they sympathized with the USSR and communism. Bernard Shaw gave a list of 38 people to a friend of department employee Celia Kerwan, including John Steinbeck, John Priestley, Charlie Chaplin, and others. The author also suggested that some of them were undercover Soviet agents.
He was under surveillance by British intelligence agencies.
Ironically, British officials suspected that Orwell had close ties to the communists. In 2007, a file was declassified as the secret services tracked the author from 1929 to 1950. In a note dated January 20, 1942, Scotland Yard agent Sergeant Ewing stated that Orwell had “advanced communist beliefs.” According to him, the author is allegedly often seen at communist meetings.