Thursday 12 September 2013

Literary Tourism #1: George Orwell

I was walking in London yesterday, taking in the colourful houses of Portobello Road, when something bright blue caught my eye. A blue plaque! I was standing right outside George Orwell's house!


I love 1984, mainly for the emotional and unsettling impact upon the reader in the final pages, so as soon as I saw this plaque I whipped out my phone and joined the other tourists taking photos. It reminded me of a time a couple of years ago when I was walking through Cambridge and I spotted St. Botolph's church, which was the namesake of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath's poetry journal. At the time, I was writing a long essay on the two poets and I was swimming in their biographies. I got maybe a bit too overexcited about it, including squealing and taking photos, much to the embarrassment of the boy.

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