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

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 Francis and Charles Field Professor of History, Emeritus, 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 war as a 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 we'll 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 and my recent book about him.

His father, who is the, 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 against their wishes,

and that's a whole other story, to be sold to China.

So Orwell and he had an older sister, Marjorie, and his parents were in India.

But in fact, his mother, with Marjorie and Eric, of course he was born Eric Blair,

came back, came to England when Orwell was, I forgot exactly, six or seven 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 to 1927.

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

with the far with India and Burma but but but that's where he was born and he was born into sort of the official classes.

Sometimes he's characterized as an outsider, which I think is inaccurate.

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