This is CBS I In The World. I'm John Batch with Professor Peter Stansky of Stanford University. His new book is The Socialist Patriot.

These are revelations about George Orwell, aka Eric Blair. The name George Orwell is a pseudonym chosen at the occasion of its first novel, Memoir,

Down in Out in London in Paris, between leaving Eaton in December of 21 and the publication in 1933 of Down in Out in London in Paris.

George Orwell spends five years in Burma as a representative, an official, an authority, an enforcer of the Empire.

And in that time, he shaped opinions of the Empire he was serving and professor to call George Orwell an anti-imperialist. Is that sufficient? Is that correct about what was developing in Burma?

Yes, yes, I think it is. I think what's exaggerated or some people write that all are returned from Burma, convinced anti-imperialist.

I think he had doubts. Orwell's transitions are more gradual, I think, than people frequently say. He became increasingly anti-imperialist.

He came back having doubts about the Empire, but I think much to his father's disapproval, his decision to resign from the police force was partially driven by his doubts about imperialism.

But I think more important was he decided I want to be a writer. I don't want to do this. I want to have a different career.

And I think that was the major reason that he resigned from the surface. He's affording future pension and a short income.

He's a very uncertain income. You know, he never really made money, made much money. He made some, but he made comparative little money from being a writer until with the publication of Animal Farm.

The Republican Animal Farm in 1994 made him very well-off.

1933, he publishes down and out in London in Paris. 1934, his memoir of Burmese Days, these are novels.

The novel.

The novel and clergyman's daughter, 1935. In 1936, he's married now to Eileen O'Shaughnessy, a woman who helps him a great deal as she types for him. She's also an inspiration for many of his ideas.

But in December of 1936, he decides he needs to see war up close. Why did he choose the Spanish War? What attracted him, professor?

Well, I think there was a great outrage and concern, you know, with the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, that a Franco one in Spain, things would be even worse.

And a democratic legitimate government was being challenged. I think it was very much the root of the time that Spain was where the action was, where the questions were.

There's also something of a debate. It said he went out to fight. That's not quite true.

I think his initial impulse was to go to Spain to write about it, to be a reporter. But then when he arrived in Barcelona, he was overwhelmed by what he considered the the

wonderfulness of what had happened there. And he felt very strongly that this was a situation that he had to fight for.

And so that's when he decided, you know, it might have been in his mind that he might fight, but I certainly don't think it was a firm decision when he went.

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