Sonia Orwell of George Orwell during the last decade of the writer's life, and other friends of Orwell, have said that Sonia was the model for Julia, the heroine of "Nineteen Eighty-Four", the "girl from the fiction department" who brings love and warmth to the middle-aged hero, Winston Smith. As Orwell wrote in "Nineteen Eighty-Four", "the girl from the fiction department... was looking at him... She was very young, he thought, she still expected something from life... She would not accept it as a law of nature that the individual is always defeated... All you needed was luck and cunning and boldness.
Statue of George Orwell of the Orwell Society, responded in "Private Eye"'s letters page that "the plinth on which the statue stands seems to fit in perfectly with the building". On BBC Radio 4's "Front Row", the critic Sarah Gaventa also questioned the use of a plinth for this "man of the people". Gaventa was approving of the sculpture itself. "You can see he wants to get into the conversation and give you his very honest and forthright opinions. It's Orwell. Who else could it be? When you look at the canon of Martin Jennings's work… it's about brave people who speak out. I’m