The story of Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) starts with his father, whom he wouldn’t meet until he was eight years old. Blair’s father worked in India in the production of opium for distribution to the Chinese market. His role was not as an underling of some drug lord, but as a civil servant employed by the crown.
The cruel oppression and exploitation of natural resources that made the British Empire is exposed. The Indian population was forced to grow poppies rather than food and, in turn, that opium inflicted untold misery on the Chinese people for the Empire’s profit.
Early life and adventure in Burma
Eric Blair’s childhood was spent in England where his education was mixed with pain, hunger, and misery. His ability and hard work when needed won him a scholarship at Eton, where he did the least possible to get by. Instead of going on to university, he applied to join the then Burmese police force, which offered good pay, a degree of independence, and time alone. He passed the entrance exam, which included a horse riding test that he just scraped through, and sailed to Burma (now known as Myanmar).
While his contemporaries were at Oxford he would be leading a team of 30-50 men, touring villages by day and night, recruiting training and disciplining native police officers, doing the payroll, preparing cases for prosecution etc. He was doing the dirty work of Empire, but unlike his father he saw the consequences first hand:
“He abandoned belief that the forces of law and order are always right and sided with the oppressed against their natural enemy, the police.” (p.58)
Home again as a writer
After five years, aged 22, he returned to England with the clear ambition to be a writer. His family mocked him, urging him to return to Burma. His lived experience in Burma would provide plenty of material for later works, but he wanted to write about the poverty at the heart of the Empire. To do that he had to experience it, spending time in London and tramping around Britain.
“Hardship, injustice, violence and oppression inspired him to write, his reputation based on provocative honesty.” (p.100)
He spent two years living in Paris eking out the last of his savings from Burma. When his remaining money was stolen, he was left destitute, sleeping on benches and working where he could.
Returning to England again, he completed his first book, Down and out London and Paris. Unable to find a publisher, he took up a teaching post. While teaching, he completed his second book, A Clergyman’s Daughter, which was published by Victor Gollancz who became his agent, friend, and publisher. That’s when Eric Blair became George Orwell.
He married Eileen and moved to a small cottage in Wallington, Hertfordshire – a cold, damp home overrun with mice, but they made the best of it. He continued writing, spending time in Wigan living above a shop selling tripe, to see first-hand life in the slums of the industrial north.
Life during wartime
Orwell spent six months fighting in the Spanish Civil war with the Republicans (left wing) against the Nationalists (right wing fascists). As ever, the left was divided. In Madrid, he applied to join the Communists. Being rejected probably saved his life, as he would almost certainly have been executed in the Communist purges ordered by Stalin.
He joined the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, or POUM) where his training as a colonial police officer helped prepare to him for warfare.
During the long gaps between action, he would learn much about the politics of left. Miraculously he survived being shot though the throat by the communists and would later flee to France. The experience of war left him battling against post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Unfit to serve in the Second World War, he continued writing. In an EssayThe Lion and the Unicorn – Socialism and the English Genius,he set out his vision for a socialist Britain:
“The nationalisation of major industries, limitations on incomes, reform of education… Many of these ideas were implemented when the Labour government was elected” (p.208)
He spent two years working for the BBC producing propaganda to be broadcast in India. Leaving the BBC, he then worked part-time at Tribune as literary editor while Aneurin Bevan was editor.
Animal Farm
The job at Tribune gave him time to work on Animal Farm, which was completed in February 1944. The book expresses Orwell’s concern that after Hitler, Stalin would dominate Europe. In his forward to the Hungarian edition, Orwell wrote:
“Nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country and that every act of its ruler must be excused.” (p.245)
Meyers takes us through Orwell’s struggle to find a publisher. Gollancz refused as it was seen as being critical of Russia and Stalin, and other rejections followed: it was too short for Collins, Cape were dissuaded by the ministry of information, an American publisher declared, “It’s impossible to sell animal stories in the US”.
Eventually, Orwell’s simple declaration that, “It’s all about animals and very anti-Russian” persuaded Warburg to publish.
Once published, Orwell visited many bookshops making sure that it had not been placed with children’s literature. Animal Farm sold 250,000 copies in 1945. When a Queen’s Messenger in full livery arrived at Warburg’s to buy a copy, there were none left, and he was directed to the Anarchist bookshop.
While he visited France and Germany to report on the aftermath of the war his wife, Eileen, aware that she had several rapidly growing tumours, was advised to have a hysterectomy. She deliberated over the decision, concluding that the expense couldn’t be justified. Eventually others convinced her go ahead, only for her to die of heart failure brought on by the anaesthetic.
Throughout his life, Orwell suffered ill health. At just 18 months old, he was taken to see a doctor with a chest complaint that would progressively worsen. His lifestyle did nothing to improve his health: from the cold, damp, and hunger of English public schools, through the heat, humidity, and petrochemical pollution of Burma, time spent living outdoors in the cold and damp conditions of England, enduring the battlefield conditions of the Spanish Civil War. Even, finally, to his time on the rainy and windswept island of Jura, where he completed 1984.
Legacy
Orwell’s legacy has been huge. Between them, Animal Farm and 1984 have sold over 41 million copies, and Orwell’s reputation has been cemented as one of England’s a great writers who foresaw so much:
| Table listing some the things foreseen in Orwell’s writing (derived from p.291) | |
| Atomic weapons proliferating | Family life breaking down |
| Colonies becoming oligarchies or dictatorships | Fanaticism |
| Communist economies failing | Homelessness increasing |
| Deforestation | Language decaying |
| Dissidents institutionalised or disappeared | Nationalism |
| Drugs | Pollution |
Today, we are moving ever closer to the world described in 1984. A world of three authoritarian oligarchies (US, China, and Russia) each with an “elite happy to accept dictatorship in return for power and privilege” (p.280). Big Brother is already with us in our phones, TVs, and laptops, as major technology companies drive us on towards what has been labelled as Instrumentarianism by Shoshana Zuboff.
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