Hello and welcome to Life of the Week from History Extra, where 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 Orwell

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 the 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?

I think in terms of his literary style, they probably taught him at a young age to write quite well,

though I'm sure there's,

you know, a strong bit of natural aptitude mixed in there, too, from the get-go. He's quite

well-educated for a British man of his time. He goes to prep school at St. Cyprians and

ultimately writes a quite vicious take-down of that experience later in his essay, such, such were the joys.

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