page_title: Southwold
section_title: George Orwell
hierarchical_section_title: Southwold / Culture / George Orwell
caption_attribution_description: View from the pier of Southwold, Suffolk, England
context_page_description: Southwold is a small town and civil parish on the English North Sea coast in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk. It lies at the mouth of the River Blyth within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The town is about 11 miles south of Lowestoft, 29 miles north-east of Ipswich and 97 miles north-east of London, within the parliamentary constituency of Suffolk Coastal. The "All Usual Residents" 2011 Census figure gives a total of 1,098 persons for the town. The 2012 Housing Report by the Southwold and Reydon Society concluded that 49 per cent of the dwellings in the town are used as second homes and let to holiday-makers.
context_section_description: The writer George Orwell (then known as Eric Blair) spent periods as a teenager and in his thirties in Southwold, living at his parents' home. A plaque can be seen next door to what is now the fish and chip shop at the far end of the High Street.
  After his departure from Eton College in December 1921, Orwell travelled to join his retired father, mother and younger sister Avril, who that month had moved to 40 Stradbroke Road in Southwold, the first of their four homes in the town. From January to June 1922 he attended an educational crammer in Southwold to prepare for his Indian Police Service exams and his career in Burma. In 1929, after 18 months in Paris he returned to the family in Southwold and spent most of the next five years based there. He tutored a disabled child and a family of three boys during this time and wrote reviews and developed Burmese Days. He also spent nearly 18 months teaching in West London, until struck by a serious bout of pneumonia. His mother then insisted that he stay at home instead of teaching, and he spent the time writing A Clergyman's Daughter. The novel is partly set in a fictionalised East Anglian town called "Knype Hill". His final visit to Southwold was in 1939.
caption: Southwold from the end of the pier
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