“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

So begins one of the most well-known and influential books of the twentieth century. George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four – set in an imaginary totalitarian future – while suffering from tuberculosis. Several phrases from the book remain in common usage today, including ‘Big Brother’, ‘Room 101’ and ‘thought police’.

Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair in 1903 in eastern India, but he has links to Rickmansworth and other parts of Hertfordshire. Orwell and his family, together with their neighbours, the Buddicoms, spent the summer of 1921 in Rickmansworth.

Jacintha Buddicom was Orwell’s first love. They made a habit of taking long walks through the Chess valley together during their holiday.

This summer, Orwell’s future was decided. He would not go to university, but instead would join the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, then a British colony.

Working as an imperial policeman gave him considerable responsibility. When he was posted in Twante he was responsible for the security of 200,000 people.

In 1927, he contracted dengue fever and was allowed to return to England due to his illness. Once there, he decided against returning to Burma. He resigned from the Indian Imperial Police and resolved to become a writer.

It was his experiences in the Burma police that influenced his first novel, Burmese Days.

He later travelled to Spain to take part in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. While there, he was wounded in the throat by a sniper’s bullet, which missed a main artery by the smallest margin. He and his wife were forced to flee from communists who were suppressing revolutionary dissenters.

On the outbreak of World War II, Orwell’s wife, Eileen, started working in the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information. The MOI was formed the day after Britain declared war, with its function being to control news and information. Orwell also submitted his name to the Central Register for war work, but nothing transpired.

He finally obtained war work in 1941, when he began working on propaganda for the BBC. He supervised cultural broadcasts to India to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine Imperial links.

By then he was a prolific journalist, known for his essays, reviews and columns in newspapers and magazines.

He resigned from the BBC in 1943 following a report confirming his fears that few Indians listened to the broadcasts. This gave him the opportunity to concentrate on writing Animal Farm.

He moved to a small sixteenth century cottage in Wallington, Hertfordshire, where he lived for four years. It is likely that he wrote much of Animal Farm in this cottage and drew on his experiences there for inspiration, as the fictional farm in his book, Manor Farm, is named after the farm in the village.

Animal Farm was published in 1945. It is a political fable set in a farmyard but based on Stalin’s betrayal of the Russian Revolution. This novella made Orwell’s name and ensured that he was financially comfortable for the first time in his life. Despite being educated at Eton, his family were never wealthy; he was only able to be educated at the school because he was elected a King’s Scholar, a student chosen on the basis of good academic performance and qualifying for reduced fees.

Four years after Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. The novel was instantly recognised as a masterpiece.

Orwell was a worldwide success and in high demand. When he fell ill in 1948, the request for permission to import streptomycin to treat his tuberculosis went as far as Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health. David Astor helped with supply and payment, and Orwell received the medicine.

Despite declining health, he became engaged to Sonia Brownell (his first wife, Eileen, died under anaesthesia during a hysterectomy), who attended him diligently in hospital. Their wedding took place in his hospital room in University College Hospital, London, in 1949.

Three months later, an artery burst in his lungs, killing him at age 46.

In 2014, Orwell’s birthplace, a bungalow in Bihar, India, became the first Orwell museum.

The term ‘Orwellian’ is in widespread use today, used to denote a system of control by propaganda, surveillance and misinformation.