The creator of Big Brother and 1984 changed the way we looked at government and the potential future which faced us if certain choices and options were taken or allowed to be taken by others. Born as Walmesley Blair in Bengal, India in the town of Motihari, to the daughter of a tea merchant and a father who worked in the opium department, Orwell was a product of his age. He moved to England with his mother and sister in 1904, as many colonial administrator's families did when it came time to enroll for a formal education. He attended the prestigious public school of Eton where he published his first writings in school periodicals. His dislike and distrust of the Western class system was developed at Eton and his preparatory school St Cyprian where he wrote 'Such, Such' were the Joys" which was an damming attack of the school and the system. Orwell failed to win a scholarship to university, at 17 years of age,  which he required in order to attend and was forced to consider and take a position in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police where he served from 1922- 27. He began to take on the local Imperial habits and took a native mistress. Through his years as an assistant superintendent he began to develop a dislike of the manner in which the locals were treated by the British. These feelings became so intense that they led him to resignation form the police force in 1927. He later wrote 'Shooting an Elephant' which his recollections of that period.

He decided in 1928 that he was going to be a writer and set out to gain experiences that would serve as sources for his stories and essays. During 1928-29 this search for knowledge took the form of a lifestyle of a tramp or beggar in which he worked just enough to fed and cloth himself. He even got intentionally arrested for drunkenness in order to see what jail time was like. His first efforts as a professional writer brought faint praise from friends and critics. 

It was during this time that he took the name George, a British name to be sure and Orwell, which was the name of a river in East Anglia, as his pseudonym which he would use for all of his works for the rest of his life. He was unable to earn a living from his writings and decided to accept a position as a teacher at a private school. While teaching he completed his first novel 'Burmese Days'-1934, about his experiences while serving in Burma. 1936 was a watershed year for Orwell due to three important episodes in his career. He married Eileen O'Shaugnessy, published his second book 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying' and was commissioned by Victor Gollancz, a publisher, to undertake a milestone work in English social development, a documentary about the unemployed in North England. The documentary was titled 'The Road to Wigan Pier'.  Like many artists and writers of his age he took up the cause of socialism. With the economic crash of the 30's impacting most western societies, the collapse or at least faults of capitalism seemed to be reveled in all their glaring nakedness.

He was soon swept up with the movement to support the socialist in Spain and went to fight against Franco where he was badly wounded and only managed to escape from his own allies when the Stalinist fractions began to take over the leftist forces and purge other socialist elements. Back in England he wrote 'Homage to Catalonia' which appeared in 1938. Although initially opposed to war with Germany, he joined the Home Guard and worked for the BBC as a literary editor from 1943 - 45. He wrote one of his two great novels, Animal Farm, towards the end of the war.

The theme of a revolution betrayed by it's own revolutionaries could be equally applied to Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. In 1945 his wife died and by 1949 he had decided to marry Sonia Brownell who had been editorial assistant. Three months later Orwell died from tuberculosis in London. Fortunately for the world he had been able to complete 1984 which is the novel for which he is most famous and which was the world ob Big Brother, who was involved and controlled every facet of the individuals life.

The caution which people treated their relationships with their own governments from that time on was carefully compared to the characters and government in 1984 and the year itself became the symbol for a feared system which might develop.