George Orwell / Eric Arthur Blair born in British India, grew up in England, from 1922–1927 served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (Myanmar), an experience that filled him with guilt and disgust for colonial repression

lived among the poor in London and Paris, documenting homelessness and low-wage labor

fought in the Spanish Civil War with the POUM militia; being hunted by Stalinist forces radicalized his anti-totalitarian worldview

During WWII he worked for the BBC Eastern Service; not an MI5 agent but provided opinions about suspected communists to the Information Research Department

Animal Farm (1945) - an allegory of Soviet Union: a fable where revolutionary ideals decay into tyranny under the pigs’ rule