ORWELL'S FIRST WIFE'S GRAVE

To Orwell Today,
re: EILEEN BLAIR'S GRAVE

Jackie,

I visited Eileen Blair's grave again. I visited in early August 2006 (last month) and I call in there every few months to pay my respects. As I described in an earlier email, her grave is in St Andrew’s Cemetery, Jesmond, Newcastle. Orwell was there in 1945 for the funeral.

I have uploaded 2 videos of my visit to Youtube. You can put the URLs on your site if you want.

The URLs are: EILEEN BLAIR CEMETARY and EILEEN BLAIR GRAVESTONE

-Stephen Maule (Winston)

Greetings Stephen,

Thanks a million for sending video clips of your visit to Eileen Orwell's grave. It is the next best thing to being there for all of us in the world who will probably never get there ourselves, and I'm sure the spirit of Orwell is happy that you are visiting.

I'll never forget my visit to his grave. He chose the same understated words and style for himself as he had for Eileen. VISITING ORWELL'S GRAVE

All the best,
Jackie Jura

PS - This summer a new biography came out "The Lost Orwell". Here's how TheTimes describes it:
"...The prize item is a batch of six letters from Orwell's first wife Eileen to her close friend Norah Myles, whom she had met at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where they both read English. Eileen has always been a rather shadowy figure. She and Orwell married in June 1936 and, though they longed for a family, the marriage was childless. She died in 1945, while undergoing surgery, three weeks after they had adopted a son, Richard. These letters show she was resilient and funny, and a match for her husband both in intellect and temperament. Their first home, a country cottage in Hertfordshire, was primitive enough to satisfy even Orwell's appetite for discomfort — a corrugated iron roof, no electricity, cold water, an outside privy. Added to that, they were desperately poor, and he was working flat out to finish The Road to Wigan Pier before leaving to fight in the Spanish civil war...Orwell's comrades in the militia declared that she "worshipped the ground he walked on", but in these letters her love is tempered by a good deal of affectionate laughter..."

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

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