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‘One of the lish writers of the twentieth century’ Robert McCrum, Observer

‘A prophet who thought the unthinkable and spoke the unspeakable, even when it offended conventional thought’ Peter Grosvenor, Daily Express

‘He saw through everything because he could also see through himself Many writers and journalists have tried to i anything like his moral authority’ Peter Ackroyd, The Times

‘Orwell’s innocent eye was often devastatingly perceptive…a man who looked at his world onder and wrote down exactly what he saw, in ad Standard

‘Matchlessly sharp and fresh…The clearest and lish prose style this century’ John Carey, Sunday Times

‘The great e…It is impossible not to be elated by his literary and political writing – and enraged by what he was up against…the most lovable of writers, so for his company’ Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Spectator

‘The finest English essayist of his century…He made it his business to tell the truth at a time when many contemporaries believed that history had ordained the lie…His work endures, as lucid and vigorous as the day it ritten’ Paul Gray, Time

ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR (George Orwell) was born in 1903 in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service The faland in 1907 and in 1917 Orwell entered Eton, where he contributed regularly to the various college azines From 1922 to 1927 he served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, an experience that inspired his first novel, Burmese Days (1934) Several years of poverty followed He lived in Paris for two years before returning to England, where he worked successively as a private tutor, schoolteacher and bookshop assistant, and contributed reviews and articles to a number of periodicals Down and Out in Paris and London was published in 1933 In 1936 he was commissioned by Victor Gollancz to visit areas of mass unean Pier (1937) is a powerful description of the poverty he saw there At the end of 1936 Orent to Spain to fight for the Republicans and ounded Hoe to Catalonia is his account of the civil war He was admitted to a sanatorium in 1938 and from then on was never fully fit He spent sixthe Second World War he served in the Home Guard and worked for the BBC Eastern Service from 1941 to 1943 As literary editor of Tribune he contributed a regular page of political and literary commentary, and he also wrote for the Observer and later the Manchester Evening News His unique political allegory, Aniether with Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which brought him world-wide fame

George Orwell died in London in January 1950 A few days before, Des in which he wrote: ‘You havethe few eneration’

Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be like unto him

Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit