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This is CBS Eye on the World with John Bachelor. Here's John Bachelor.

George Orwell. George Orwell is 1984 immediately in the minds of American readers.

However, George Orwell has a backstory, and I welcome Professor Peter Stansky, the

Franciscan Charles Field Professor of History, a Maridus at Stanford University, whose

new book is about George Orwell, aka Eric Blair, the Socialist Patriot.

George Orwell and War, this takes us from George Orwell's early days, experiencing the

first words of schoolboy, all the way to his early days in the Cold War before his untimely

death. Professor, congratulations, and a very good evening to you. He's born 1903 in India.

Why was his family in India, and then will speak of his magical mother? Good evening to you.

Thank you very much for having me. I'm delighted to be with you and talk about George Orwell,

in my recent book about him. His father, who's, I believe, the 10th child of a vicar, was

a civil servant in India, and actually was in the opium, the British government cultivated

opium in India up until 1919, but it was illegal to consume in India, and it was cultivated

in order to be sold to the against their wishes, and that's a whole other story, to be sold

to China. So Orwell and he had an older sister, Marjory, and his parents were in India, but

in fact his mother, with her two, with Marjory and Eric, of course he's born Eric Blair,

came back to England when Orwell was, I forgot exactly, 67 months old. So in fact he was only

briefly in India, but of course he would return when he was a police officer in Burma from 1922

in 1927, and his mother, who was half French, her family was in Burma, and he, you know, so he had

connections with the, with India and Burma, but that's where he was born, and he was born into

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