Orwell at the end

clipped from www.todayinliterature.com Orwell on Orwell On this day in 1950 George Orwell died, aged forty-six. Whatever Orwell achieved in his last years seems over-balanced by what he suffered. As both his friends and critics have remarked, Orwell did not go gentle into life, either. His ideals and social commitment set "a stern example" and made him "an awkward person" (David Pryce-Jones). "He could not blow his nose without moralizing on the state of the handkerchief industry" (Cyril Connolly). And perhaps most famously, he was the "wintry conscience of a generation" (V. S. Pritchett). In one essay on Orwell titled "A Knight of the Woeful Coutenance" (this is borrowed from Don Quixote), Muggeridge recalls that his friend even got his laughter from obeying his ideals: "...he began to chuckle - a throaty, rusty, deep-down chuckle very characteristic of him. His laughter had the same rusty quality as did his voice, due, I understood, to a throat wound he had received in Spain."