Book description
George Orwell was an inveterate keeper of diaries. The Orwell Diaries
presents eleven of them, covering the period 1931-1949, and follows
Orwell from his early years as a writer to his last literary notebook.
An entry from 1931 tells of a communal shave in the Trafalgar Square
fountains, while notes from his travels through industrial England show
the development of the impassioned social commentator. This same acute
power of observation is evident in his diaries from Morocco, as well as
at home, where his domestic diaries chart the progress of his garden and
animals with a keen eye; the wartime diaries, from descriptions of
events overseas to the daily violence closer to home, describe astutely
his perspective on the politics of both, and provide a new and entirely
refreshing insight into Orwell's character and his great works. Eric
Arthur Blair (George Orwell) was born in India in 1903. He was educated
at Eton, served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, and worked in
Britain as a private tutor, schoolteacher, bookshop assistant and
journalist. In 1936, Orwell went to fight for the Republicans in the
Spanish Civil War and was wounded. In 1938 he was admitted into a
sanatorium and from then on was never fully fit. George Orwell died in
London in 1950.
