Sonia Orwell Sonia Orwell Sonia Mary Brownell (25 August 1918 – 11 December 1980), better known as Sonia Orwell, was the second and last wife of writer George Orwell, whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair. Sonia is believed to be the model for Julia, the heroine of "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Brownell was born in Calcutta, the daughter of a British colonial official. Her father died when she was four years old. When she was six, she was sent to the Sacred Heart Convent in Roehampton (now part of Roehampton University), in England. She left at 17 and, after learning French in Switzerland,
George Orwell Orwells moved to a seventh-floor flat at Langford Court, St John's Wood, while at Wallington Orwell was "digging for victory" by planting potatoes. In August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" when he was taken on full-time by the BBC's Eastern Service. He supervised cultural broadcasts to India to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine Imperial links. This was Orwell's first experience of the rigid conformity of life in an office, and it gave him an opportunity to create cultural programmes with contributions from T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, E. M. Forster, Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, and