Ep. 66: George Orwell – Top 6 Books
Intro
Hello and Welcome to this episode of the podcast, "The Mnemonic Tree", where we add a single mnemonic leaf to our Tree of Knowledge.
Today's episode is on the British novelist George Orwell who is most famous for two books in particular, Animal Farm in 1945 and Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949.
Interestingly George Orwell was not George Orwell, as this was his pen name with his real name being Eric Blair. Apart from writing, Orwell had a diverse working life, being a policeman, a teacher, a journalist, a soldier, a bookseller, a critic and of course a novelist. Today’s mnemonic is on his top 6 books.
So, with no further ado, we will begin with a summary from Wikipedia.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Orwell_press_photo.jpg
Wikipedia Summary
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic.[1] His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism.[2]
Orwell produced literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
Blair was born in India, and raised and educated in England. After school he became an Imperial policeman in Burma, before returning to Suffolk, England, where he began his writing career as George Orwell—a name inspired by a favourite location, the River Orwell. He lived from occasional pieces of journalism, and also worked as a teacher or bookseller whilst living in London. From the late 1920s to the early 1930s, his success as a writer grew and his first books were published. He was wounded fighting in the Spanish Civil War, leading to his first period of ill health on return to England. During the Second World War he worked as a journalist and, between 1941 and 1943, for the BBC. The 1945 publication of Animal Farm, where he used the animal trope to "relay bureaucratic tensions and flaws in democracy" from Adela Zamudio's 1914 allegorical story "La reunión de ayer / Yesterday's Meeting," led to fame during his lifetime.[3][4] During the final years of his life he worked on Nineteen Eighty-Four, and moved between Jura in Scotland and London. It was published in June 1949, less than a year before his death.
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime".[5][6] In 2008, The Times ranked George Orwell second among "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[7]
Extracted from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell]
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_George_Orwell_at_BBC_Broadcasting_House.jpg
Mnemonic
George Orwell - Top 6 Books Mnemonic – THANK Animal Farm
(Picture George Orwell buying a big farm with lots of animals, thanks to the proceeds from his book Animal Farm)
1. The Road to Wigan Pier
2. Homage to Catalonia
3. A Clergyman’s Daughter
4. Nineteen Eighty-Four
5. Keep the Aspidistra Flying
6. Animal Farm
Five Fun Facts
1. Apparently, Orwell was little bit of a prankster. Once he sent a birthday message attached to a dead rat, whilst another time he made up a song about his housemaster, John Grace mocking his appearance and his liking of Italian art.
2. It seems his pranks only got bigger with age. In 1931 he got himself arrested on purpose. He was investigating poverty for his memoir and the idea was to get a taste of prison and mix with the villains and tramps. He managed to get himself arrested for being “drunk and incapable” but unfortunately for Orwell his crime didn’t warrant prison, just 48 hours in custody.
3. Orwell voluntarily fought in the Spanish Civil War at age 33 to fight fascism. During his service he was shot in the neck by a sniper, which he ultimately survived and wrote about in his book, Homage to Catalonia.
4. Another near disaster occurred to Orwell in the second world war when a German V-1 flying bomb, otherwise known as a “doodlebug” demolished the Orwell home in London. Luckily, he, his wife and his son were not home at the time, however his script for Animal Farm was. After many hours searching in the rubble he finally recovered it, threw it into a wheelbarrow and took it back to his office.
5. Orwell composed a list of artists he suspected of having communist leanings. This was done for the Information Research Department and included such people as Charlie Chaplin, Orson Wells, John Steinbeck, Katherine Hepburn, George Bernard Shaw and Daniel Day Lewis’s father, Cecil Day Lewis.
While many accused him of being a rat, others merely say, he was just stating that they were unsuitable for counter intelligence.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George-orwell-BBC.jpg
Three Question Quiz
Q.1. Did George Orwell coin the term “Cold War”? True or false
Q.2. What country was George Orwell born?
Q.3. For his secondary schooling, Orwell won a scholarship to one of Britain's most prestigious education institutions. Which school did he attend?
Bonus Q. George Orwell died at the age of 46 of pulmonary tuberculosis. What decade did he die?
Mnemonic Recap
George Orwell - Top 6 Books Mnemonic – THANK Animal Farm
(Picture George Orwell buying a big farm with lots of animals, thanks to the proceeds from his book Animal Farm)
1. The Road to Wigan Pier
2. Homage to Catalonia
3. A Clergyman’s Daughter
4. Nineteen Eighty-Four
5. Keep the Aspidistra Flying
6. Animal Farm
Three Question Quiz Answers
Q.1. Did George Orwell coin the term “Cold War”? True or false
A. True. In his 1945 essay “You and the Atom Bomb”
Q.2. What country was George Orwell born?
A. George Orwell was born in Motihari, Bihar, India
Q.3. For his secondary schooling, Orwell won a scholarship to one of Britain's most prestigious education institutions. Which school did he attend?
A. Eton
Bonus Q. George Orwell died at the age of 46 of pulmonary tuberculosis. What decade did he die?
A. 1950’s. January 21, 1950. And just in regards to George Orwell dying of pulmonary tuberculosis, there is a theory, it was because he was always surrounded by drafts!
Word of the Week
bobèche
[ boh-besh ]
noun
a slightly cupped ring placed over the socket of a candleholder to catch the drippings of a candle.
Example
The bobeche filled and subsequently overflowed as Orwell wrote through the night to finish his latest novel
Extracted from: [https://www.dictionary.com/]
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References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/546150/facts-about-george-orwell