George Orwell

George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903 in Motihari, then in British India, was an English writer and journalist who died in London in 1950. He attended Eton College and then served for several years in the British imperial police in Burma. After returning to England, he worked as a teacher, bookseller and freelance journalist; his experiences of poverty and casual labour informed his first book, “Down and Out in Paris and London.” In 1936 he joined the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War and was wounded. During the Second World War, he worked among other roles for the BBC. He became internationally known for the satirical fable “Animal Farm” (1945) and the dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (1949). Orwell died of tuberculosis.