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50 free George Orwell trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This George Orwell trivia quiz covers the life of Eric Arthur Blair, the Old Etonian policeman-turned-tramp who became the twentieth century's most quoted political writer. The easy questions cover the books everyone knows (Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four), the country he was born in, the war he fought in and the neologisms he gave the language. From there it moves through the biography: the imperial police posting in Burma, dishwashing in Paris, the hop fields of Kent, the tripe shop in Wigan, the sniper's bullet at Huesca and the BBC job he quit to write about pigs. The harder end covers the pseudonyms he rejected, the publishers who turned down Animal Farm, the poodle called Marx, the tea he had shipped to Catalonia, the streptomycin, the hospital-room wedding, and the essay the British Council apologised for rejecting seventy years late. Nothing here is a plot question about the novels themselves; the focus is the man. Every answer was checked against Orwell's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you want the books rather than the biography, our classic literature and banned books quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was George Orwell's real name?
Eric Arthur Blair
He adopted the pen name in 1932 for his first book so that his family would not be embarrassed by his tramping.
Q 02In which country was Orwell born?
India
His father worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service; his birthplace bungalow in Motihari opened as a museum in 2015.
Q 03Orwell's father worked in which branch of the Indian Civil Service?
The Opium Department
Richard Blair was a sub-deputy opium agent overseeing production and storage of opium for sale to China.
Q 04Which future writer did Orwell first meet at St Cyprian's prep school in Eastbourne?
Cyril Connolly
Connolly later edited Horizon and published several of Orwell's essays; Orwell came second to him in the Harrow History Prize.
Q 05When Orwell first met his childhood sweetheart Jacintha Buddicom, what was he doing?
Standing on his head in a field
Asked why, he explained that you are noticed more upside down than the right way up.
Q 06Which famous novelist taught Orwell French at Eton?
Aldous Huxley
Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four are still read side by side as rival dystopias.
Q 07After leaving Eton, Orwell joined which force?
The Indian Imperial Police
He sailed in October 1922 and trained at Mandalay; his grandmother lived in Moulmein.
Q 08Which two of Orwell's essays draw directly on his years as a policeman in Burma?
'A Hanging' and 'Shooting an Elephant'
He also turned the experience into the novel Burmese Days, published in 1934.
Q 09What did Orwell have tattooed on each knuckle in Burma?
A small blue circle
Rural Burmese still wear similar tattoos, believed to protect against bullets and snake bites.
Q 10Which tropical illness did Orwell contract at Katha in 1927, leading to his leave in England?
Dengue fever
He used the leave to rethink his life and resigned from the police to become a writer, effective March 1928.
Q 11When Orwell went 'native' as a tramp in London's East End, what name did he use?
P.S. Burton
He was imitating Jack London, whose The People of the Abyss he admired.
Q 12In Paris, Orwell took a menial job doing what in a fashionable hotel on the rue de Rivoli?
Dishwashing
The experience fills the first half of Down and Out in Paris and London.
Q 13Which poet, then at Faber & Faber, rejected the manuscript of Down and Out in Paris and London?
T. S. Eliot
Eliot rejected Orwell again a decade later when Faber turned down Animal Farm.
Q 21Whom did Orwell marry on 9 June 1936?
Eileen O'Shaughnessy
They met at a party thrown by his landlady, a psychology student at University College London.
Q 22Which American novelist told Orwell over dinner in Paris that fighting in Spain was 'sheer stupidity'?
Henry Miller
Miller thought Orwell's ideas about defending democracy were 'all baloney', but Orwell went anyway.
Q 23Which militia did Orwell join in the Spanish Civil War?
The POUM
He joined because his Independent Labour Party contacts were linked to it, and later found himself branded a fascist by the Communist press.
Q 14Why did Orwell deliberately get himself arrested for being drunk and disorderly at the end of 1931?
To experience Christmas in prison
The Bethnal Green police did not consider it worth a jail sentence and released him after two days in a cell.
Q 15Which publisher issued Down and Out in Paris and London for a £40 advance in 1933?
Victor Gollancz
Gollancz's newly founded house was an outlet for radical and socialist writing.
Q 16The 'Orwell' in George Orwell was taken from what?
A river in Suffolk
He chose it as 'a good round English name'; George came from the patron saint of England.
Q 17Orwell's job at Booklovers' Corner, a Hampstead second-hand bookshop, informed which novel?
Keep the Aspidistra Flying
He worked afternoons, wrote in the mornings and lodged with the shop's Esperantist owners.
Q 18In Wigan in 1936, Orwell lodged in dirty rooms above what?
A tripe shop
He also went down Bryn Hall coal mine and read public health records in the local library.
Q 19The Road to Wigan Pier was published in 1937 for which subscription scheme?
The Left Book Club
The publisher added a nervous preface to the second half, which argues for socialism, while Orwell was away in Spain.
Q 20Orwell's research for The Road to Wigan Pier put him under surveillance by which body from 1936?
Special Branch
Its dossier concluded that his 'Bohemian' dress sense revealed he was a Communist.
Q 24Where was Orwell hit by a sniper's bullet in Spain in 1937?
In the throat
He towered over the Spanish fighters and had been warned about standing at the parapet.
Q 25How tall was Orwell?
6 ft 2 in
His height and size-12 boots made him a source of amusement in the Spanish trenches.
Q 26Which book came out of Orwell's experiences in the Spanish Civil War?
Homage to Catalonia
It was a commercial flop in 1938 and only found readers in the 1950s after his later successes.
Q 27Back at his cottage in Wallington after Spain, Orwell named his poodle puppy after whom?
Marx
His cockerel was called Henry Ford; the cottage's rose garden he planted still survives.
Q 28Orwell wrote Coming Up for Air while wintering for his health in which country?
Morocco
The novelist L. H. Myers secretly paid for the six-month stay in a villa outside Marrakesh.
Q 29During the Second World War, Orwell produced Eastern Service broadcasts for which organisation?
The BBC
He resigned in September 1943 after a report confirmed that few Indians actually listened.
Q 30Which fairy tale did Orwell adapt for radio six days before he left the corporation in 1943?
The Emperor's New Clothes
He was fascinated by the fairy-tale genre and put 'A Fairy Story' on the title page of Animal Farm.