Post submitted by Ella, one of our Student Experience Ambassadors
George Orwell was a British journalist and author born in 1903 in eastern India. Born originally as Eric Arthur Blair, Orwell is famous for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-four (1949). He grew up in as the son of a minor British official in the Indian civil service, which at the time was under British imperial rule. Following tradition, he himself joined the Indian Imperial Police in 1922.
Once an advocate of the British imperial establishment, Orwell soon became a literary and political rebel. His experience serving in Burma as part of the Indian Imperial Police revealed the oppressive rule to which the Burmese citizens were subjected. He resigned from the Imperial Police in 1928 and set his sights on becoming a writer.
His two most renowned books are both politically motivated. Animal Farm is based on the story of the Russian Revolution and its betrayal by Joseph Stalin, but uses barnyard animals through which to tell the tale. Nineteen Eighty-four is a novel that depicts a world dominated by totalitarian police states and served as a warning about the potential of Nazism and Stalinism.
Sadly, George Orwell died of tuberculosis in 1950, but his literary legacy lives on in modern day society.