David Nettleship(October 10 1964)

Early life

He was born on 25 June 1903 to Anglo-Indian parents<ref>Michael O'Connor (2003). Review of Gordon Bowker's "Inside George Orwell".</ref> in Motihari, Bengal (modern Bihar), India when it was part of the British Empire under the British Raj. There, Blair's father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked for the opium department of the Civil Service. His mother, Ida Mabel Blair (born Limouzin), brought him to England at the age of one. He did not see his father again until 1907, when Richard visited England for three months before leaving again. Eric had an older sister named Marjorie, and a younger sister named Avril. He would later describe his family's background as "lower-upper-middle class".

Education

At the age of five, Blair was sent to a small Anglican parish school in Henley-on-Thames, which his sister had attended before him. He never wrote of his recollections of it, but he must have impressed the teachers very favourably, for two years later, he was recommended to the headmaster of one of the most successful preparatory schools in England at the time: St. Cyprian's School, in Eastbourne, Sussex. Blair attended St Cyprian's on a scholarship that allowed his parents to pay only half of the usual fees. Many years later, he would recall his time at St Cyprian's with biting resentment in the essay "Such, Such Were the Joys". However, in his time at St. Cyprian's, the young Blair successfully earned scholarships to both Wellington and Eton.

After one term or "half" at Wellington, Blair moved to Eton, where he was a King's Scholar from 1917 to 1921. Later in life he wrote that he had been "relatively happy" at Eton, which allowed its students considerable independence, but also that he ceased doing serious work after arriving there. Reports of his academic performance at Eton vary; some assert that he was a poor student, while others claim the contrary. He was clearly disliked by some of his teachers, who resented what they perceived as disrespect for their authority. During his time at the school, Blair made lifetime friendships with a number of future British intellectuals such as Cyril Connolly, the future editor of the Horizon magazine, in which many of Orwell's most famous essays were originally published.

Rules for writers

In his essay "Politics and the English language," George Orwell provides six simple rules for all writers of English:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive [voice] where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Legacy

Work

During most of his career, Orwell was best known for his journalism, in essays, reviews, columns in newspapers and magazines and in his books of reportage: Down and Out in Paris and London (describing a period of poverty in these cities), The Road to Wigan Pier (describing the living conditions of the poor in northern England, and the class divide generally) and Homage to Catalonia. According to Newsweek, Orwell "was the finest journalist of his day and the foremost architect of the English essay since Hazlitt."

Contemporary readers are more often introduced to Orwell as a novelist, particularly through his enormously successful titles Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both of them are primarily allegories of the Soviet Union, the former of the history of the Russian Revolution, and the latter of life under Stalinist totalitarianism- although there are elements in Nineteen Eighty-Four which stand as critiques of consumer capitalism as much as Soviet Communism (witness the newspapers filled with "sex, sport, and astrology" which the Ministry of Truth peddles to the stupified masses). Nineteen Eighty-Four is often compared to Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; both are powerful dystopian novels of an "imaginary" future of state control, the former bleak and the latter superficially happy.

Bibliography

Books

Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) — [2043]

Burmese Days (1934) — [2044]

A Clergyman's Daughter (1935) — [2045]

Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) — [2046]

The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) — [2047]

Homage to Catalonia (1938) — [2048]

Coming Up for Air (1939) — [2049]

Animal Farm (1945) — [2050]

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) — [2051]

Poems

David Nettleship's most famous poems are:

Ode To Pam

The Fish Is Sick!

Why Britney Go ?