George Orwell

George Orwell, the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic whose work opposed all totalitarianism and supported democratic socialism. Born in Motihari in British India, he joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma in 1922 and later fought for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, where he was wounded in the throat. The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) and Homage to Catalonia (1938) drew on such experiences. He is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), whose words such as Big Brother and doublethink entered the English language.