George Orwell, the pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair, was born in Bengal, India, in 1903. He was educated at Eton, became a policeman in Burma but suffered and studied poverty. His great works, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, are a product of his hatred of totalitarianism. His legacy of writing and political thought is much admired today.

Richard Bradford is Research Professor at Ulster University and Visiting Professor at Avignon University. He has published thirty-five books including literary biographies of Ernest Hemingway, John Milton and most recently the widely-acclaimed Orwell: A Man of Our Time (2020).

D.J. Taylor won the Whitbread Biography Prize in 2003 for his Orwell: The Life. He is a novelist of great distinction, critic and reviewer, writing for the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the Spectator and The Tablet.