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ORWELL BIRTHDAY TYPING CLERGYMAN'S

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I own an old Remington portable typewriter -- the same model Orwell used to type "1984" -- and every year, on Orwell's birthday, I type the first page from one of his nine books, in descending order from when he wrote them.

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This year, on June 25th, 2017 -- Orwell's 114th birthday -- I typed from A CLERGYMAN'S DAUGHTER, Orwell's third book. It was published in 1935.

On the computer desk in my office I moved the keyboard out of the way and placed Orwell's typewriter there instead. Then, with the book open on the left -- held down by Winston Smith's "1984" glass paperweight -- I typed the first page. Orwell's ANIMAL FARM friends were there for the party and the cake.

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The framed photos on the wall above the desk are of Orwell places in London I visited during my HOMAGE TO ORWELL in 2003. On the monitor screen can be seen the title-page of the on-line version of A CLERGYMAN'S DAUGHTER. In the next photo my ORWELL TODAY website is on the screen. Notice, on the shelf to the right of the screen, a bottle of Jura whisky in its box. That's a souvenir from my PILGRIMAGE TO ORWELL in 2004 when I visited the house where Orwell typed "1984" on his Remington portable typewriter. Orwell was with me in spirit that day -- and today while I typed A CLERGYMAN'S DAUGHTER.

All the best,
Jackie Jura

ORWELL BIRTHDAY TYPING CLERGYMAN'S
FirstPage Cake114 PagedTyped
(I typed the first page on Orwell's typewriter)
June 25, 1903-2017

Motihari film highlights Orwell's life & works
(14 yrs working for preservation of birthplace)
watch George Orwell in the land of Satyagraha
TimesIndia/YouTube, Jun 27, 2017
INDIA SHRINE TO ORWELL BIRTH

You can stay in cottage where Orwell wrote 1984
StayBarnhillJura Barnhill Website
(in 1946 he went to Jura where he rented Barnhill)
Telegraph, Jun 29, 2017
ESCAPE TO BARNHILL

Broadway's "1984" is Orwell for Dummies
(a stone dud from very first scene)
1984BroadwayRestricted 1984BroadwayFlop
1984 on Broadway scenes so graphic people fainting
(jagged bursts of neon strip lighting shock the senses)
Huff/Gothamist, Jun 29, 2017
1984 MOVIE 1984 IS BAD &
Prolefeed & Ministry of Truth

A Wander Through George Orwell's Hayes, London Historians, July 10, 2017
(Mike Paterson talks us through George Orwell's time in Hayes from April 1932-July 1933)
...After resigning his police commission and returning from Burma in 1927, Orwell divided his time over the next five years between investigating the lifestyle of 'gentlemen of the road', living an impoverished bohemian lifestyle in Paris, and hanging out at his parents' retirement house in Suffolk. Although he had some success getting articles accepted in the Adelphi magazine and the New Statesman, he was nonetheless skint. So he took a teacher's job at a private prep school in Hayes: the Hawthorns High School. There were only 14-15 boy pupils and one other teacher, a Mr Shaw. This made Orwell -- being the senior of the two -- technically headmaster... Orwell was known as being strict in the classroom (not a word of English was allowed in French lessons), yet kindly and enthusiastic at extra-curricular activities. He frequently took the lads on nature rambles, showing them how to capture marsh gas in jars, that sort of thing; he also wrote and directed the school play, Charles II, which was performed in St Mary's Church nearby. Orwell wrote about Hayes that it was "one of the most God-forsaken places I have ever struck". Given what we know, he was hardly giving the area a fair crack of the whip. Much as he worked on being empathetic to the common man, Orwell was a bit of a snob, particularly when it came to the suburban middle-classes. His time in Hayes provided a rich vein which he mined profitably in both A Clergyman's Daughter and Keep the Aspidistra Flying (and probably Coming Up for Air). So one would like to think that rather than having a deep-felt antipathy for poor Hayes, Orwell was simply impressing his literary friends. Today, the building that was the Hawthorns High School is the Fountain House Hotel. It has a plaque to Orwell on the front of the building, sponsored by the Hayes Literary Society...)

StayBarnhillJura You can stay in the cottage where Orwell wrote 1984, Telegraph, June 24, 2017
There is rarely a bad moment to quote George Orwell. Here was an author of rare talent whose words have long enriched the English language, holding a bright torch to power and highlighting its excesses. If it was not Animal Farm cleverly lampooning the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalin with its scheming pigs and gullible carthorses, or Nineteen Eighty-Four with its dark picture of a totalitarian Britain, it was that excerpts from both these works (in particular) have seeped into common parlance. "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," runs the acerbic comment on communism from the former; "Thought Police", "Big Brother" and "Room 101" are much-quoted phrases from the latter... Orwell would have been 114 this Sunday (June 25) - an improbable age for someone who was weighed down by illness for much of his adult life, not least his turbulent Forties when he was wracked with tuberculosis. But it was this period which witnessed his greatest achievements - both Animal Farm (published in 1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (in 1949) were written when Orwell was in increasingly bad health, and buffeted by personal tragedy. It is also a timeframe, in the case of the second tome, that can be visited. Orwell concocted the urban claustrophobia of Nineteen Eighty-Four not amid the gloom and smog of post-war London, but in the clean air and rural tranquility of the Inner Hebrides. By 1946, he was in calm financial waters, and in demand as a writer, thanks to the success of Animal Farm. But he was also mourning the loss of his wife Eileen, who died while undergoing a hysterectomy on March 29 1945. So in the May of 1946 he set off north, for Scotland, to Jura - where he rented Barnhill, an abandoned farmhouse at the north end of the island. He spent much of the year there, then returned in April 1947, and again in July 1948 - only really leaving for East Kilbride, on the outskirts of Glasgow, during the winter of 1947, where his failing condition was diagnosed as TB. In spite of - or perhaps because of - this shadow, stalking him, he completed his sinister masterpiece by December 1948. He would be dead within 13 months, succumbing to the stubborn devil in his lungs on January 21 1950 - aged just 46. Nineteen Eighty-Four had been published a mere seven months earlier... Go to ESCAPE TO ORWELL'S BARNHILL & VISITING ORWELL'S BARNHILL

1984BroadwayFlop Broadway's "1984" is Orwell for Dummies, by Lev Raphael, Huffington Post, Jun 26, 2017
The British dramatization of George Orwell's subtle and beautifully written novel 1984 is making headlines in the USA because someone might have fainted at the Broadway debut, according to The Washington Post. Critics feel they have to warn readers about the torture sequences... When I saw the show in London, I thought they were some of the worst-produced and least convincing scenes of theater I'd ever seen, and I grew up in New York and started playgoing in junior high, went on to become a member of the Stratford Festival in Canada when I moved to Michigan. The shouting and the strobe lights and the noise in those scenes didn't feel remotely vivid, just obnoxious. As for the blood, it was so ridiculously fake that two TV actors I recognized sitting in front of me started to giggle. They were far more entertaining, and when we chatted outside afterwards, they agreed with me that it wasn't a stellar production, despite the rave reviews. The whole thing was truly a stone dud from the very first scene onward because the concept was flawed. This adaptation of 1984 offered a ridiculous frame narrative that was like a dreary summer course for under-achieving students who had to be spoken to very slowly, clearly, and repetitively to make sure they got it. Orwell's novel felt reduced to agitprop on Valium as lines were repeated ad nauseum. The gorgeous, haunting novel about surveillance, truth, and individual freedom in an autocratic state that I'd just reread in a state of awe seemed like some cheap cartoon. But who knows, it may become a popular freak show if enough people go there and pass out. Go to 1984 MOVIE 1984 IS BAD

1984BroadwayRestricted '1984' on Broadway now has an age restriction because people are reportedly fainting, by Jen Chung, Broadway Hardcore, June 22, 2017
...The production, adapted from George Orwell's dystopian novel by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan, comes from England, where it was critically acclaimed; the Guardian noted, "The lighting, sound and video design... both shock the senses and achieve swift transitions between past, present and future", while a critic for the Evening Standard wrote, "The set, initially a book-lined, wood-panelled room, is ably supported by some superior video design from Tim Reid. Jagged bursts of neon strip lighting interrupt scenes interrogation-style and I found my heart beating ever more quickly with the drip-feed of anxiety generated by the jangling, ominous atmosphere".... To be sure, the age restriction announcement may just be the latest in Broadway's long history of publicity stunts. On the other hand, the production is, by all accounts, not for the faint of heart. Even the cast has taken a beating; Wilde said on Twitter that the play is so "NUTS" that she busted a lip and broke co-star Tom Sturridge's nose.

ORWELL'S CLERGYMAN'S DAUGHTER (...Somehow, after that, Dorothy seemed to see her way more clearly. It was obvious that instead of being uncomfortably knowledgeable as she had feared, the class knew as nearly as possible no history at all. With this discovery her stage-fright vanished. She grasped that before she could do anything else with them it was necessary to find out what, if anything, these children knew. So, instead of following the time-table, she spent the rest of the morning in questioning the entire class on each subject in turn; when she had finished with history (and it took about five minutes to get to the bottom of their historical knowledge) she tried them with geography, with English grammar, with French, with arithmetic -- with everything, in fact, that they were supposed to have learned. By twelve o'clock she had plumbed, though not actually explored, the frightful abysses of their ignorance...)

ORWELL BIRTHDAY TYPING CLERGYMAN'S, typed June 25, 2017

ORWELL BIRTHDAY TYPING ASPIDISTRA, typed June 25, 2014

ORWELL BIRTHDAY TYPING WIGAN, typed June 25, 2013

ORWELL BIRTHDAY TYPING CATELONIA, typed June 25, 2012

ORWELL BIRTHDAY TYPING COMING UP, typed June 25, 2011

ORWELL BIRTHDAY TYPING ANIMAL FARM, typed June 25, 2010

ORWELL BIRTHDAY TYPING 1984, typed June 25, 2009

ORWELL'S TYPEWRITER A REMINGTON

ORWELL'S TYPEWRITER MY GRANDFATHER'S

JOURNEY TO ORWELL'S JURA and VISITING ORWELL'S BARNHILL

HOMAGE TO ORWELL and PILGRIMAGE TO ORWELL

ORWELL'S OTHER BOOKS

INDIA SHRINE TO ORWELL BIRTH

Jackie Jura
~ an independent researcher monitoring local, national and international events ~

email: orwelltoday@gmail.com
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website: www.orwelltoday.com