George Orwell
From RationalWiki
George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950) is probably Britain's best-known anti-authoritarian writer. Many ideas and phrases from his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four have entered the English language, especially "Big Brother is watching you," and, "some animals are more equal than others."
His work on diverse other topics is also notable; he was one of many left-wing writers and journalists who fought the Nationalists and the dictator Franco in Spain as a member of the International Brigade (he recorded this in Homage to Catalonia), and also he worked as a policeman in Burma; there, he criticized the British Empire's role there in his book Burmese Days.
Despite his death in 1950, Orwell's ideas on Britishness and Socialism still resonate today; indeed John Major, the 1990s Conservative Prime Minister, quoted him once when attempting to define what was worth preserving in the country.[1]
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- ↑ "He was...an eloquent eulogist of England - John Major's vision of warm beer, cricket on the village green and a redoubtable maiden aunt bicycling to morning communion through the mist was borrowed from Orwell" in [1]
