Editing George Orwell (section)

===Childhood===
[[Jacintha Buddicom]]'s account, ''Eric & Us'', provides an insight into Blair's childhood.<ref name=autogenerated4>Jacintha Buddicom ''Eric & Us'' Frewin 1974.</ref> She quoted his sister Avril that "he was essentially an aloof, undemonstrative person" and said herself of his friendship with the Buddicoms: "I do not think he needed any other friends beyond the schoolfriend he occasionally and appreciatively referred to as 'CC'". She could not recall him having schoolfriends to stay and exchange visits as her brother Prosper often did in holidays.<ref>remembering Orwell, p. 22</ref> [[Cyril Connolly]] provides an account of Blair as a child in ''[[Enemies of Promise]]''.<ref name=Connolly>{{cite book |author=Connolly, Cyril |author-link=Cyril Connolly |title=Enemies of Promise |orig-date= 1938 |year=1973 |publisher=Deutsch |location=London |isbn=978-0233964881}}</ref> Years later, Blair mordantly recalled his prep school in the essay "[[Such, Such Were the Joys]]", claiming among other things that he "was made to study like a dog" to earn a scholarship. Jacintha Buddicom repudiated Orwell's schoolboy misery described in the essay, stating that "he was a specially happy child". She noted that he did not like his name because it reminded him of a book he greatly disliked—''[[Eric, or, Little by Little]]'', a Victorian boys' school story.<ref>Orwell Remembered, p. 23</ref>
[[File:Eton College front 4.jpg|alt=A large gothic facade|thumb|Orwell's time at Eton College was formative in his attitude and his later career as a writer.]]
Connolly remarked of him as a schoolboy, "The remarkable thing about Orwell was that alone among the boys he was an intellectual and not a parrot for he thought for himself".<ref name=Connolly/> At Eton, [[John Vaughan Wilkes]], his former headmaster's son at St Cyprians, recalled that "he was extremely argumentative—about anything—and criticising the masters and criticising the other boys&nbsp;[...] We enjoyed arguing with him. He would generally win the arguments—or think he had anyhow."<ref>John Wilkes in Stephen Wadham's ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books 1984.</ref>

Blair liked to carry out practical jokes. Buddicom recalls him swinging from the luggage rack in a railway carriage like an orangutan to frighten a woman passenger out of the compartment.<ref name="autogenerated1"/> At Eton, he played tricks on John Crace, his [[Master in College|housemaster]], among which was to enter a spoof advertisement in a college magazine implying pederasty.<ref>{{cite book |author=Hollis, Christopher |author-link=Christopher Hollis (politician) |title=A study of George Orwell: The man and his works |publisher=Hollis & Carter |location=London |year=1956 |oclc=2742921}}</ref> Gow, his tutor, said he "made himself as big a nuisance as he could" and "was a very unattractive boy".<ref>Crick (1982), p. 116</ref> Later Blair was expelled from the [[Cram school|crammer]] at Southwold for sending a dead rat as a birthday present to the town surveyor.<ref name="autogenerated1984">Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick ''Orwell Remembered'' 1984</ref>

Blair had an interest in natural history which stemmed from his childhood. In letters from school he wrote about caterpillars and butterflies,<ref name="Crick-S&W">{{cite book |author=Crick, Bernard |title=George Orwell: A Life |publisher=Secker & Warburg |year=1980 |location=London |isbn=978-0436114502}}</ref> and Buddicom recalls his keen interest in ornithology. He also enjoyed fishing and shooting rabbits, and conducting experiments as in cooking a hedgehog<ref name="autogenerated1"/> or shooting down a jackdaw from the Eton roof to dissect it.<ref name=Mynors>Roger Mynors in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books 1984.</ref> His zeal for scientific experiments extended to explosives—again Buddicom recalls a cook giving notice because of the noise. Later in Southwold, his sister Avril recalled him blowing up the garden. When teaching he enthused his students with his nature-rambles both at Southwold<ref>Peters, R. S. "A Boy's View of George Orwell" in ''Psychology and Ethical Development''. Allen & Unwin, 1974.</ref> and at Hayes.<ref>Geoffrey Stevens in Stephen Wadham's ''Remembering Orwell''. Penguin, 1984.</ref> His adult diaries are permeated with his observations on nature.