Statue of George Orwell Statue of George Orwell A statue of George Orwell by the British sculptor Martin Jennings was unveiled on 7 November 2017 outside Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC, in London. The wall behind the statue is inscribed with Orwell's words "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear", from an unused preface to "Animal Farm". The head of BBC history, Robert Seatter, said of Orwell and the statue that "He reputedly based his notorious Room 101 from "Nineteen Eighty-Four" on a room he had worked in whilst
George Orwell gave a talk at the Adelphi Summer School held at Langham, entitled "An Outsider Sees the Distressed Areas"; others who spoke at the school included John Strachey, Max Plowman, Karl Polanyi and Reinhold Niebuhr. Orwell's research for "The Road to Wigan Pier" led to him being placed under surveillance by the Special Branch from 1936, for 12 years, until one year before the publication of "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Orwell married Eileen O'Shaughnessy on 9 June 1936. Shortly afterwards, the political crisis began in Spain and Orwell followed developments there closely. At the end of the year, concerned by Francisco Franco's military