George Orwell

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, a British writer and journalist born in Motihari, in British India, on 25 June 1903. He was educated in England, then served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma before deciding to become a writer. He spent periods living in poverty in Paris and London, and later reported on the lives of working people in northern England. He fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, an experience that shaped his political thinking. Orwell wrote novels, essays, reviews and reportage, and he is admired for plain, direct prose and for his dislike of cruelty and lies. His two best-known books, a fable about a farm and a novel about a totalitarian state, remain widely read and have given everyday language words and phrases that people still use. He died of tuberculosis in London on 21 January 1950, aged 46.