Editing George Orwell (section)

===Relationships and marriage===
Blair's adolescent idyll with Buddicom was shattered in the summer of 1921, when he attempted to take their relationship further than Buddicom was ready for, in what was characterised as a ''botched seduction''.<ref name="hughes">{{cite web|last=Hughes|first=Kathryn|author-link=Kathryn Hughes|date=18 February 2007|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/feb/17/georgeorwell.biography|title=Such were the joys|work=[[The Guardian]]|access-date=25 June 2024}}</ref> When Blair left for Burma the following year, he wrote to Buddicom but she soon stopped replying to his letters.<ref name="postscript">{{cite book |last1=Buddicom |first1=Jacintha |title=Eric & Us |date=2006 |publisher=Finlay Publisher |location=Chichester |isbn=978-0-9553708-0-9}}</ref> Returning from Burma in 1927, Blair went in search of Buddicom at her family home to ask her to marry him but could not find her.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Davison |first1=Peter |title=Orwell - A Life in Letters |date=27 January 2011 |publisher=Penguin Classics |isbn=978-0141192635 |pages=576}}</ref> What had been ''a very serious business indeed'' for Blair had apparently been dismissed by Buddicom, leaving Blair potentially emotionally vulnerable.<ref name="Times Media Limited"/> Buddicom and Blair revisited those memories briefly in 1949 in three letters and three telephone calls but without closure.<ref name = Pathway>{{cite journal |last1=Loftus |first1=Guy |title=A Pathway to Orwell |journal=The Orwell Society Journal |date=September 2024 |volume=24 |pages=32–36}}</ref>

Mabel Fierz, who later became Blair's confidante, said: "He used to say the one thing he wished in this world was that he'd been attractive to women. He liked women and had many girlfriends I think in Burma. He had a girl in Southwold and another girl in London. He was rather a womaniser, yet he was afraid he wasn't attractive."<ref name=autogenerated6>Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell'' Penguin Books 1984</ref>

Brenda Salkield (Southwold) preferred friendship to any deeper relationship and maintained a correspondence with Blair for many years, particularly as a sounding board for his ideas. She wrote: "He was a great letter writer. Endless letters, and I mean when he wrote you a letter he wrote pages."<ref name=Wadhams/> His correspondence with Eleanor Jacques (London) was more prosaic, dwelling on a closer relationship and referring to past rendezvous or planning future ones in London and [[Burnham Beeches]].<ref>Correspondence in ''Collected Essays Journalism and Letters'', Secker & Warburg, 1968.</ref>

[[File:Richard Blair 1.jpg|thumb|right|Orwell's adopted son [[Richard Blair (patron)|Richard]] in 2018 reciting his father's work at his graveside during an annual visit to All Saints' churchyard, Sutton Courtenay]]

When Orwell was in the sanatorium in Kent, his wife Eileen's friend Lydia Jackson visited. He invited her for a walk and out of sight "an awkward situation arose."<ref>Davison, Peter (ed.). ''George Orwell: Complete Works'' XI 336.</ref> Jackson was to be the most critical of Orwell's marriage to Eileen, but their later correspondence hints at a complicity. At the time Eileen was more concerned about Orwell's closeness to Brenda Salkield. Orwell had an affair with his secretary at ''Tribune'' which caused Eileen much distress, and others have been mooted. In a letter to Ann Popham he wrote: "I was sometimes unfaithful to Eileen, and I also treated her badly, and I think she treated me badly, too, at times, but it was a real marriage, in the sense that we had been through awful struggles together and she understood all about my work, etc."<ref>Crick (1982), p. 480</ref> Similarly he suggested to Celia Kirwan that they had both been unfaithful.<ref>Celia Goodman interview with Shelden June 1989 in Michael Shelden ''Orwell: The Authorised Biography''</ref> There are several testaments that it was a well-matched and happy marriage.<ref name=Dakin>Henry Dakin in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell''</ref><ref name=Donahue>Patrica Donahue in Stephen Wadhams ''Remembering Orwell''</ref><ref>Meyer, Michael. ''Not Prince Hamlet: Literary and Theatrical Memoirs'' 1989</ref>

In June 1944, Orwell and Eileen adopted a three-week-old boy they named [[Richard Blair (patron)|Richard Horatio]].<ref>{{cite book|title=The Lost Orwell|first=Peter|last=Davison|author-link=Peter Davison (professor)|page=244|publisher=Timewell Press|year=2007|isbn=978-1857252149}}</ref> According to Richard, Orwell was a wonderful father who gave him devoted, if rather rugged, attention and a great degree of freedom.<ref>{{Cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/news/george-packer/orwell-and-son|title=Orwell and Son|magazine=The New Yorker|access-date=2 September 2017|date=25 March 2009}}</ref>

Orwell was very lonely after Eileen's death in 1945 and was desperate for a wife, both as companion for himself and as mother for Richard. He proposed marriage to four women, including Celia Kirwan, and eventually [[Sonia Brownell]] accepted.<ref>Spurling, Hilary. 2002. ''The girl from the Fiction Department: a portrait of Sonia Orwell.'' New York: Counterpoint, p. 96.</ref> Orwell had met her when she was assistant to Cyril Connolly, at ''[[Horizon (British magazine)|Horizon]]'' literary magazine.<ref>Crick (1982), p. 449</ref> They were married on 13 October 1949, only three months before Orwell's death. Some maintain that Sonia was the model for Julia in ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''.