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Hello and welcome to Life of the Week from History Extra.

We're leading historians delve into the lives of

history's most intriguing and significant figures.

From Double Think and Thought Crime to the Chilling Room 101.

George Orwell has shaped our nightmares and our language in a way that few other writers can match.

But what drove the author behind Animal Farm

and 1984 to conjure up such haunting dystopian visions? In today's episode of our Life of the Week series, Danny Bird speaks to historian and

biographer Laura Beers, about the man who gave us big brother and whose surname has become

one of the 21st century's most resonant adjectives.

We should probably begin by looking at the man's name because it was in fact a pseudonym, wasn't it?

So he's born Eric Blair in Madahari in India in 1903 and he doesn't take up the name

George Erwell until he publishes his first book down and out in Paris in London and part of the

logic of publishing under a pseudonym is at that point he's still living

with his parents and his younger sister and he doesn't want to embarrass them with a book that really is about

a man kind of slumming it amongst disgraceful comrades in Paris and London and so he's

looking for a pseudonym and he decides on George Orwell which is emblematic of his

love of England and his patriotism in a sense as he takes name George from the patron saint of

England and the name Orwell from the river Orwell which is not far from his parents

home in Southwold where he's living at the time. How much did his early life and education shape his political beliefs and literary style?

...