XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.fan.george-orwell   
   From: HenHanna@devnull.tb   
      
   On 1/21/2024 1:33 AM, Aidan Kehoe wrote:   
   >   
   >   Ar an chéad lá is fiche de mí Eanair, scríobh Ross Clark:   
   >   
   >   > [...] Strange fact about Orwell which came to light in a previous   
   >   > discussion: apparently there is no extant record of his voice. This   
   despite   
   >   > the fact that he broadcast many talks on the BBC over a period of years.   
   >   > Perhaps he died too soon after the advent of the tape recorder.   
   >   
   > From his biography (boarding school in Sussex, empire-builder family   
   > background) and from the lack of comment on his accent I imagine he spoke a   
   > normal-for-the-time RP.   
   >   
   >    “Tuberculosis was diagnosed and the request for permission to import   
   >    streptomycin to treat Orwell went as far as Aneurin Bevan, then Minister   
   of   
   >    Health. David Astor helped with supply and payment and Orwell began his   
   >    course of streptomycin on 19 or 20 February 1948.[142] By the end of July   
   >    1948 Orwell was able to return to Jura and by December he had finished the   
   >    manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In January 1949, in a very weak   
   >    condition, he set off for a sanatorium at Cranham, Gloucestershire,   
   escorted   
   >    by Richard Rees. Unluckily for Orwell, streptomycin could not be   
   continued,   
   >    as he developed toxic epidermal necrolysis, a rare side effect of   
   >    streptomycin”   
   >   
   >    “Orwell was a heavy smoker, who rolled his own cigarettes from strong   
   shag   
   >    tobacco, despite his bronchial condition. His penchant for the rugged life   
   >    often took him to cold and damp situations, both in the long term, as in   
   >    Catalonia and Jura, and short term, for example, motorcycling in the rain   
   and   
   >    suffering a shipwreck.”   
   >   
   > He wasn’t going to have had a long life in any event, even if they had   
   cleared   
   > the TB. That’s a lifestyle of COPD, frequent pneumonias, early death.   
   >   
   > Speaking of mid-century Englishmen who smoked too much, one of my favourite   
   > worked examples when speaking to medical students about heart disease is Ian   
   > Fleming, who smoked like a chimney and died of a heart attack (likely a   
   STEMI,   
   > the more immediately life-threatening type) at the age of 53. One of the   
   > medical students reacted, when I asked if they knew who wrote the James Bond   
   > books, “but this isn’t on the curriculum for second med” !   
   >   
      
      
      
   my #1 fav essay by Orwell is...   [Why i write]   
                                 #2 is  [Shooting an elephant]   
      
      
   iirc... Maxwell died at 48.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)