Folk of Genius: The 5 unusual habits of George Orwell

George Orwell was the originator of Big Brother, Double-Speak and the Thought Police. He authored Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four along with numerous non-fiction books and journalism. He was a one-time BBC producer, soldier and socialist. He is one of the greats. Like many creative sorts, Orwell had his idiosyncrasies.

Time for tea

George Orwell hated lager but loved a cup of tea. He published a guide to making the beverage titled A Nice Cup Of Tea in the Evening Standard in 1946. When he was posted to Catalonia, he had Fortnum and Mason tea delivered to him. He noted that army tea tastes of grease and whitewash. He believed cups should be cylindrical rather than flat and shallow.

Home aloner

Orwell was not a committed city-slicker. He lived on the Scottish Isle of Jura intermittently between 1946 and 1948. This followed the death of his first wife, Eileen, and several unsuccessful marriage proposals to young women in London. Jura is one of the Inner Hebrides. Today it hosts a famous Whiskey Festival and attracts hardy tourists. In Orwell’s time, it was an isolated outpost. The inclement weather and basic housing in an abandoned farmhouse did not improve Orwell’s poor health. He liked the isolation but had to abandon the island in 1949. He moved to a sanatorium in Gloucestershire with severe tuberculosis. Jura was where Orwell completed the manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

A brush with poetry

Orwell is world-famous for fiction, politics, journalism and drama. It is less known that he was an occasional poet. One of his verses was inspired by an advertisement for toothpaste. It opens with the couplet, ‘Brush your teeth up and down, brother, Oh, brush them up and down!’

Language lover

Orwell was a proficient linguist. He spoke eight languages aside from English. These included Greek, Latin, Burmese, Hindustan, Shaw-Karen, French, Spanish and Catalan. Shaw-Karen is a Tibeto-Burman tonal language.