Friday 29 June 2012
George Orwell was born as Eric Blair on 25th June 1903 so Monday could have been his 109th birthday. We had lots of tweets on what people were reading to celebrate and the most prominent were; Nineteen Eighty Four, Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia. If you’d like to celebrate Orwell you can find many of his essays, as well as notes on his novels with their first chapter and much much more on our website.
Buxton Festival 2012
We’re so excited to be returning to Buxton on 16th July. For 2012 we’ll be taking Paul Anderson, Jan Montifiore, Charles Allen, Tony Wright and Stuart Evers to row about who is the better writer; Orwell or Kipling. You can see full details on our website.
From the archive
Independent Booksellers’ Week starts tomorrow. Why not pick up Keep the Aspidistra Flying for a picture of Orwell’s Gordon Comstock working in a book shop? Or you can read ‘Bookshop Memories’ which tells the story of Orwell’s own experiences selling books. Or you could reacquaint yourself with Orwell’s, ‘Confessions of a Book Reviewer’ and have a look at 2012 posthumous Special Prize winner Christopher Hitchens’ ‘Fleet Street’s Finest’. Or you could read Orwell’s brilliant ‘Good Bad Books’.
From elsewhere
The wartime diaries
This week’s entry was published on 26th June 1942. Next week’s entries will be published on 1st and 3rd July 1942. Don’t forget our other Orwell Diary blogs: his Hop-Picking Diary and The Road to Wigan Pier Diary. If you’ve got any suggestions about our website(s), we’d love to hear from you – email us on katriona.lewis@mediastandardstrust.org. You can also follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.