March 4, 2013 11:15 am
This Is The Only Known Footage of George Orwell
Image: ceridwen
Although he lived in the 1950s, author George Orwell’s mug was never captured on film. At least that’s what scholars thought, until someone uncovered this footage from around 1921.
At around the 50 second mark in this video above, you can see Orwell at a spritely age of 18 walking across a field at Eton College. But that’s all you get. No interviews, no readings, nothing. Orwell’s voice was never captured on tape, and this brisk march is all anyone has found of him on film.
So while Orwell lives on in millions of class syllabi, his image lives for just a few seconds in our collective film history.
Sign up for our free newsletter to receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
More from Smithsonian.com:
How Aldous Huxley, 118 Today, Predicted the Present Far More Accurately than George Orwell
Excerpt from George Orwell: A Life
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
2 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
But which person is he? I could not make him out.
Comment by James Simpson — March 5, 2013 @ 11:59 am
Yes, which one is he?
Comment by Ryan — March 6, 2013 @ 1:55 pm