Eton Orwell Prof 1

ORWELL TRULY A GLOBAL FIGURE

GEORGE ORWELL
by Mike Grenier (MAG),
a teacher at Eton

In truth, very rarely does literature change lives and
societies: this is a nice line peddled by English teachers
to keep them in a job and give them a sense of self-
worth as they stare in the shaving mirror each morning.
And in the list of celebrated Old Etonian writers there
are few who in 2002 (and of course these lists are there
to tell us more about ourselves than the figures of the
past) merit the epithet 'great'. There is one, to my mind,
who is truly a global figure, respected as an essayist as
much as a novelist, whose ideas and views still have the
power to provoke and whose creative mind still pos-
sesses the magic to amaze. George Orwell should be
remembered, however, not for his Etonianness - and
those who know his biography will understand why -
but in far wider terms. I will not market him as one of
us and see him branded as a symbol of what an Etonian
education can produce. He is greater than that. So
a great man but not a great Old Etonian.

~ published in Eton College Chronicle