This is CBS I on the world with John Bachelor.

Here's John Bachelor.

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 was I believe the tenth 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 and 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 her two, with Marjorie and Eric, he was born Eric Blair, 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

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