George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair was born this week, 103 years ago, on the 25th of June, in Motihari, Bihar, to a British colonial civil servant working for the Opium Department of the British Raj. But the George Orwell we know was not born till much later. In 1911, Blair joined St Cyprian’s School in Eastbourne, East Sussex. Though he hated the school, that is where he first met Cyril Connolly. Connolly later became a writer, too, and published many of Blair’s essays as the editor of Horizon, a literary magazine.
As a student, he received numerous accolades in the field of academics. While at school, Blair wrote two poems that were published in the Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard. He also came second to Connolly in the Harrow History Prize. He even earned scholarships to Wellington and Eton. In January 1917, he shifted to Wellington, and, four months later, joined Eton. According to Blair, Wellington was “beastly”, but he said he was “interested and happy” at Eton. He would apparently constantly neglect his studies, but worked with Roger Mynors to produce a college magazine, The Election Times, joined in the production of other publications—College Days and Bubble and Squeak—and participated in the Eton Wall Game, a variant of football.
He later worked as a policeman in Moulmein, Burma, and even as a teacher at The Hawthorns High School in Hayes, West London. In 1933, however, he wrote his first book, an autobiography, Down and Out in Paris and London, under the pen name George Orwell. Though he is better known for his works Animal Farm and 1984, those were the last two books he wrote.
Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth, too, was born this week, but in Calcutta on the 20th, and in 1952, two years after Orwell’s demise.
He studied at the prestigious school, The Doon School in Dehradun. There, he served as Editor-in-Chief of the school’s primary publication, the Doon School Weekly. A teacher at School, Mr Gurdial “Guru” Singh, described him as an “indefatigable worker, and he maintains without difficulty his distinguished level in studies…he has put in an enormous amount of energy in other spheres of school life, in dramatics, in debating, in first aid, in music, and in editing the Doon School Weekly.”
Upon graduation, he went to Tonbridge School, England, to complete his A-levels. He later studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Seth divides his time between the United Kingdom, where he bought and renovated the former home of the Anglican poet George Herbert near Salisbury, and India, where he has a family home in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. He is currently 74 years old.