Oxford Literary Festival: George Orwell's son speaks for the first time about his father

TimesOnline ^ | 15 Mar 09 | John Carey

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What would it have been like to be brought up by George Orwell? Pretty grim, you might think. But you would be wrong. In June 1944, Orwell and his wife Eileen adopted a three-week-old boy whom they named Richard Horatio Blair (Eric Blair being Orwell's real name). Now a retired engineer living happily in an immaculate house in a picture-book Warwickshire village, Blair has never publicised the fact that he was related to Orwell, always preferring to remain in the background. But ahead of a talk at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival with Orwell's biographer DJ Taylor (details, below right), Richard agreed to speak to me about his memories of his childhood.

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I thought this was an interesting read.

[Lorianne]

Interesting. Thanks for posting this.

[henry_reardon]

having grown up in a picturebook Warwickshire village myself, I wish the article had said which one it was.

[sushiman]

Arigato Gator .

Arigato anagram is I A GATOR ! LOL !

[yarddog]

That story was actually very interesting. Orwell and his Son both sound like fine people.

[x]

FWIW, Sonia Orwell was a very troubled and unhappy lady, but she did to a lot to reacquire the copywrights to Orwell's books, in order to provide for Richard and his family. She'd been blamed for having misused the estate, but actually accountants had cheated the Orwells out of their rights. She got them back at great expense and gave them to Richard and that left little for herself.

[Soothesayer]

It does not come as too surprising to me that the author of 1984 believed so strongly in freedom and wanted to raise his son with as much of it as possible.

[SuziQ]

What an interesting story! Sad that he never really knew his mother and only had six years with his father. But, from his recounting them, they sound like a wonderful six years; apparently creating enough memories to last a lifetime!

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Ha! How’s Kyushu these days? You know I was there last summer visiting the FIL.

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He certainly seems to remember more of his first six years than I do but maybe having the letters his father wrote helps. That and the fact his life sounded pretty exciting for a young boy.

I remembered that Orwell had died fairly young, I didn’t remember it was from TB. Sad he had to keep Richard away at the end due to the worries of passing it on.