[emmelaich]

About the "worst" thing I've read about Orwell was that he was a relentless moralist and didn't know how to have fun. Sorta the opposite of P.G.Wodehouse.

Which ... I'm OK with. I've read most of his work too. Of course 1984 and Animal Farm are the best but Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London are good too.

(I also love Wodehouse)

[svat]

Incidentally, in 1946 when the British public had been turned against Wodehouse because of the (entirely innocuous) radio broadcasts he had made as a German prisoner (I imagine Lord Haw-Haw was on their mind, which influenced their opinion), Orwell wrote “In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse”: https://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/plum/english/e_plum

[delis-thumbs-7e]

Worst thing you read about him is surely that he apparently tried to rape a girl in his youth:

“ But Venables's postscript changes all that. Venables is the Buddicoms' first cousin, and was left the copyright to Eric & Us, as well as 57 crates of family letters. From these she made the shocking discovery that, in 1921, Eric had tried to rape Jacintha. Previously the young couple had kissed, but now, during a late summer walk, he had wanted more. At only five feet to his six feet and four inches, Jacintha had shouted, screamed and kicked before running home with a torn skirt and bruised hip. It was "this" rather than any gradual parting of the ways that explains why Jacintha broke off all contact with her childhood friend, never to learn that he had transformed himself into George Orwell.

Venables believes that the attempted "rape", which, in truth, sounds more like a botched seduction, may also explain the sad, desperate things that happened next. She reveals for the first time that, in 1927, Jacintha gave birth to a daughter as a result of an affair gone wrong, and was obliged to let her childless aunt adopt the baby. When Eric returned that year on leave from Burma, he interpreted Jacintha's absence from the Buddicom family home as evidence that she was still angry with him (in fact, she was spending six painful months in seclusion). Any chance of picking up where they had left off, perhaps even marrying, had now gone for good. From that point, both of them seemed to give up any hope of forming a nurturing relationship. Eric turned to Burmese prostitutes and Jacintha to a 30-year affair with a Labour peer.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/17/georgeorwell.b...

[hermitcrab]

He seems to have had very problematic attitude to women, even allowing for the times.

His first wife contributed significantly to his work (including Animal Farm) but was never credited. She saved his life when he was shot in the throat in Spain, but I understand she was completely written out of 'Homage to Catalonia'.

[rawgabbit]

I read another account that for all his literary prowess, he was terribly inarticulate with women. That he would simply grab the woman that he longed for not knowing what else to do.