Eileen: the making of George Orwell, with Sylvia Topp POSTPONED…
14a Long Row, Nottingham, NG1 2DH
There are no plaques to George Orwell’s first wife. Yet Eileen Blair (née O’Shaughnessy) was not only an enabler and a supporter of her husband, on whom he depended in every way. She was the inspiration and a source of creative energy for much of his greatest work.
Putting aside her own creative potential, Eileen went wherever Orwell went, helping him to write the earliest manuscripts of the works that made him famous. Their journey together took her to Catalonia, to the front line of the Spanish Civil War, where she helped her wounded husband escape the country, and to Morocco, where she nursed him through several life-threatening bouts of tuberculosis.
In the countless biographies, essays and articles dedicated to the life of the author of Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm, Eileen Blair is invariably consigned to the shadows, if she is present at all.
Righting that wrong, Eileen: The Making of George Orwell, is a groundbreaking new book written by US author Sylvia Topp. Five Leaves bookshop is one of the few British bookshops to be hosting the author.
Sylvia will be at the shop taking part in a Q&A hosted by Nottingham journalist Benedict Cooper, a committee member of the Orwell Society.
In association with Nottingham Women’s Library from the Women’s Centre
Entrance: £4.00 (£2.00 students), including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk