Слайд 1.

My absolute favourite author is George Orwell who was an English novelist, essayist and critic. He is best
known for his satires of totalitarian rule: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both books were widely
considered to be accusations of communism under Joseph Stalin, but Orwell insisted that they were
critiques of totalitarian ideas in general, and warned that the frightening conditions he depicted could
take place anywhere.

Слайд 2.

This is his quote. “When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work
of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw
attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”

Слайд 3.

Born Eric Arthur Blair, he never entirely abandoned his original name, but his first book, Down and Out in
Paris and London, appeared in 1933 as the work of George Orwell which he took from the picturesque
River Orwell in East Anglia. His nom de plume reflected a significant shift in his lifestyle, where he turned
from a figurehead of the British imperial establishment to a literary and political rebel.

Слайд 4.

This is general information about the author.

Слайд 5.

Let's take a closer look at his biography. He was born on 25 June 1903 in eastern India, the son of a
minor British colonial civil servant. Orwell was brought up in an atmosphere of impoverished snobbery.
After returning with his parents to England, he was sent in 1911 to a boarding school on the Sussex
coast, where he was distinguished among the other boys by his poverty and his intellectual brilliance.
Then he won scholarship to Eton college. Orwell took up writing at an early age, reportedly composing
his first poem around age four. He later wrote, "I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and
holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were
mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued." One of his first literary successes came at
the age of 11 when he had a poem published in the local newspaper.

Слайд 6.

Instead of going on to a university, Orwell decided to follow family tradition and entered the British
Imperial service and worked as a colonial police officer in Burma. But he resigned in 1927 and decided to
become a writer, since he realized how much against their will the Burmese were ruled by the British,
and he felt increasingly ashamed of his job. Later he was to recount his reactions to imperial rule in his
novel “Burmese Days” that established the pattern of his following fiction in its portrayal of a sensitive,
painstaking, and emotionally isolated individual who is at odds with an oppressive or dishonest social
environment. The main character of Burmese Days is a minor administrator who seeks to escape from
the dreary and narrow-minded chauvinism of his fellow British colonialists in Burma.

Слайд 7.

Then he thought he could expiate some of his guilt by immersing himself in the life of the poor and
outcast people of Europe. Orwell went into the East End of London to live in cheap lodging houses
among labourers and homeless; he spent a period in the poor districts of Paris and worked as a
dishwasher in French hotels and restaurants; he tramped the roads of England with professional
vagrants (a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by
begging). He described his experiences in his book, 'Down and Out in Paris and London', published in
1933.

Слайд 8.

Orwell’s disgust against imperialism led not only to his personal rejection of the bourgeois lifestyle but to
a political reorientation as well. Immediately after returning from Burma he called himself an anarchist
and continued to do so for several years; during the 1930s, however, he began to consider himself a
socialist, though he was too libertarian in his thinking ever to take the further step—so common in the
period – of declaring himself a communist.

In 1936, he was commissioned to write an account of poverty among unemployed miners in northern
England, which resulted in 'The Road to Wigan Pier' (1937). It begins by describing his experiences when
he went to live among the destitute and unemployed miners of northern England, sharing and observing
their lives; it ends in a series of sharp criticisms of existing socialist movements.

In December 1936, Orwell traveled to Spain, where he joined one of the groups fighting against General
Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was badly injured during his time with a militia, getting
shot in the throat and arm. For several weeks, he was unable to speak. Orwell and his wife, Eileen, were
indicted on treason charges in Spain. Fortunately, the charges were brought after the couple had left the
country. Other health problems plagued the talented writer not long after his return to England. For
years, Orwell had periods of sickness, and he was officially diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1938. He spent
several months at the Preston Hall Sanatorium trying to recover, but he would continue to battle with
tuberculosis for the rest of his life. Upon his return to England he joined the British Independent Labour
Party and began to write against Stalinism and the Nazi regime. Between 1941 and 1943, Orwell worked
on propaganda for the BBC, but he ended up hating his job as he felt he was being used as a propaganda
machine. Orwell died of tuberculosis in a London hospital at the age of 46.

Слайд 9.

But before his death, in 1945, Orwell's “Animal Farm” was published. A political fable set in a farmyard
but based on Stalin's betrayal of the Russian Revolution, it made Orwell's name and ensured he was
financially comfortable for the first time in his life. 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' was published four years later.
Set in an imaginary totalitarian future, the book made a deep impression, with its title and many phrases
– such as 'Big Brother is watching you', 'newspeak' and 'doublethink' – entering popular use. Orwell
didn't just write literature that condemned the Communist state of the USSR. He did everything he
could, from writing editorials to compiling lists of men he knew were Soviet spies, to combat the willful
blindness of many intellectuals in the West to USSR atrocities.