George Orwell, c. 1940 (41928180381)

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair (1903 - 1950), an English writer born in British India. On of his first jobs was acting as imperial police officer in Burma, but resigned to it in 1928, because of anticolonial and antiracist feelings. Almost ten years later, in 1936, he moved to Spain and joined the Republican militia, serving in the surroundings of Osca as second lieutenant during the first steps of the Spanish Civil War. After being wounded at Teruel, he fought against communist insurgents trying to overthrow their political opponents in Barcelona. Disappointed by the position of the Republic and the rise of Stalinism, Orwell returned to England and never joined the International Brigades. His dairy was lost in Spain, as well as his camera and photographs, but he would later write Homage to Catalonia, as a report of the conflict. With the outcome of World War II, he was rejected for military service; so he headed the Indian service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The next years he would write his most famous works, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.