George Orwell

George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair in Motihari, India, was educated at Eton and served five years in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, an experience that turned him against imperialism. He wrote about poverty in Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) and The Road to Wigan Pier (1937). In 1937 he fought for the Spanish Republic in the POUM militia, was wounded, and witnessed the Soviet-backed suppression of the POUM, which he described in Homage to Catalonia (1938). He later worked for the BBC and as literary editor of Tribune, and wrote Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

Orwell's terms, such as Big Brother, doublethink and Orwellian, became part of everyday political language, and his essays are widely taught as models of plain prose. He is claimed across the spectrum: socialists stress his democratic socialism and anti-imperialism, while conservatives and Cold War liberals emphasize his anti-communism. In 1949 he gave a Foreign Office propaganda unit, the Information Research Department, a list of writers he considered communist sympathizers; critics on the left saw this as informing, while defenders note it was meant only to exclude them from anti-communist propaganda work. Some critics have also noted his hostile remarks about various social groups. His work remains central to debates on surveillance, propaganda and political language.