History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

George Orwell was born as Eric Arthur Blair on 25 June 1903 in India, where his father worked in the Indian Civil Service. He took his pen name from the King of the time, George V and the River Orwell in East Anglia.    Orwell died 70 years ago on this day, 21 January, in 1950.   George Orwell at the BBC Orwell is best known for his books such as The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Animal Farm (1945), and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). In 1942 he rented 10a Mortimer Crescent Kilburn which was the lower half of a large semi-detached house: the ground floor and basement. He moved here w ith his wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy f rom Langford Court, a modern block of flats in nearby Abbey Road. Mortimer Crescent was built in 1854 on the Greville estate and originally called Mortimer Road after Thomas Hill Mortimer. He was the solicitor for both Fulk Greville Howard and the later owner of the property, Colonel Arthur Upton. The houses were built for wealthy an...