My Homage to Orwell began on Thursday evening in Stratford-Upon-Avon, the birth and burial place of another great English author, William Shakespeare. He penned the words that describe Orwell well, "a gentleman and a scholar".

Shakespeare was one of the writers Orwell admired and never grew tired of reading. Orwell mentions Shakespeare in 1984 through the character, Syme, who works in the Ministry of Truth dumbing down the English language:

"'The Eleventh edition is the definitive edition,' said Syme... 'We're cutting the language down to the bone... Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller... By the year 2050 - earlier probably - all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron - they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be.'"

This is a photo of me standing in front of the church window behind which lies Shakespeare's tomb.

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