Short answers, pulled from the story.
George Orwell's real name was Eric Arthur Blair. He adopted the pen name George Orwell in 1932, choosing George for the patron saint of England and Orwell from the River Orwell in Suffolk, one of his favourite places.
George Orwell was born on the 25th of June 1903 in Motihari, in the Bengal Presidency of British India, now part of Bihar. He described his family as "lower-upper-middle class".
George Orwell is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm, published in 1945, and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949. His non-fiction works The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia are also critically respected.
George Orwell went to Spain around the 23rd of December 1936 to fight for the Republican side, concerned by Francisco Franco's military uprising. He joined the POUM militia, was shot in the throat by a sniper, and recounted his experiences in Homage to Catalonia.
George Orwell died in the early morning of the 21st of January 1950 at the age of 46, from a pulmonary artery rupture due to complications of tuberculosis. He had been ill for years and finished Nineteen Eighty-Four while living on the Scottish island of Jura.
George Orwell coined terms including Big Brother, Thought Police, Room 101, Newspeak, memory hole, doublethink, and thoughtcrime. The adjective Orwellian, describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices, also entered the English language from his work.
Before becoming a writer, George Orwell served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922. He resigned with effect from the 12th of March 1928, later drawing on the experience for the novel Burmese Days and the essays "A Hanging" and "Shooting an Elephant".