The Girl from the Fiction Department

Synopsis: 'Should be compulsory reading' - "The Times". George Orwell's second wife was portrayed by many of her husband's biographers as a manipulative gold-digger who would stop at nothing to keep control of his legacy. But the truth about Sonia Orwell - the model for Julia in nineteen eighty-four - was altogether different. Beautiful, intelligent and fiercely idealistic, she lived at the heart of London's literary and artistic scene before her marriage to Orwell changed her life for ever. Burdened with the almost impossible task of protecting Orwell's estate, Sonia's loyalty to her late husband brought her nothing but poverty and despair.

Review: A good book but not the one I was expecting. It didn't give me the slightest insight into George or life with George because his time with Sonia was relatively short. George was already gravely ill in hospital with tuberculosis when they married and he died shortly afterwards. There was no big romance, Sonia had known George for a couple of years previous to their marriage because of her work as assistant editor for the literary magazine 'Horizon'. In failing health, and with a young adopted son to bring up (his first wife had died.) George had apparently asked several women to marry him. Sonia often babysat for his son and also slept with him (George) on occasion (it's almost certain that she is the model for Julia in Orwell's novel 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' - bold, bossy and uncompromising.) Apparently George claimed he would get better if Sonia married him so of course, what could she do. His proposal went something like 'well, you'd better learn to make dumplings.'

When George died, his young son was left in the care of an aunt, but Sonia became his heir and was left in sole charge of his copyrights (with proviso's that would cause her much anguish and soul searching over the years) and it's this legacy that launched the tide of venom directed at her by many of George's subsequent biographers. In this book though she's portrayed as a very beautiful, clever, independent woman, hardworking and intuitive. She's certainly someone who didn't suffer fools and there's no doubt that she could be difficult and changeable. She loved art and literature and was very influential as a literary reviewer and assistant editor (it's said that some of the literary discoveries claimed by Horizon's editor Cyril Connolly were actually Sonia's.) She was a fiercely loyal and supportive friend and counted the artists Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud among them as well as philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. She loved life in Paris and spent as much time as she could there being far more happy, and at home, on that side of the channel.

Hilary Spurling, who writes this book, was a close friend of Sonia's during the last ten years of her life and sets out here to set the record straight. The vitriol that was directed towards Sonia just after her death both shocked and enraged her friends. So here we have a more balanced view, it doesn't shrink from showing her at her most imperious but it does show that she was anything but a gold digger in respect to George. Sadly, life doesn't end happily for Sonia, she isn't, despite her best efforts, able to protect George's literature from being exploited, and this hits her extremely hard .. much more so than her increasingly penniless state. Although very shrewd in many ways she placed far too much trust in accountant Jack Harrison (who had been engaged by George shortly before he died to sort out tax problems and was among the three team members put together by Sonia to help run the Orwell estate.) She is careless about signing papers and lax about money details (not enquiring about the finances at all and asking for money only reluctantly)... she eventually finds out that over the years, according to Jack Harrison, she has signed away a huge percentage of voting rights and a quarter of the shares. She becomes reclusive and unapproachable, writing to tell a friend that books are her sole companions now ... 'But when I put them down, or when I wake up, it's all there again, this terrible endless tunnel into which I've drifted which, naturally, I feel is somehow all my fault but from which I'll never emerge again, but worse [I feel] that I've damaged George.' She dies shortly afterwards of cancer, practically penniless and homeless (with Francis Bacon paying her outstanding bills) but thankfully, having just won a lawsuit brought against Jack Harrison and George Orwell Productions, she was able to regain control of George's estate and pass it on entirely to his adopted son.

A sad little book really, shortly before George died he said that he had two novels inside him waiting to be written .. his increasingly debilitating illness meant that it was impossible for him to get them down on paper, I wonder what they would have been like?