11 Facts About Jacintha Buddicom

Jacintha Buddicom met Blair in 1914 and they developed a shared interest in poetry, but she lost touch with him after he departed for Burma in 1922, and later she disputed Blair's writings about his own childhood.

Buddicom was born in Plymouth to Robert Arthur Buddicom, of Ticklerton Court, Church Stretton, Shropshire, Buddicom moved with the rest of her family to Shiplake, Oxfordshire where she first met Eric Blair in the summer of 1914 when he was standing on his head in a field at the bottom of the Buddicoms' garden.

Jacintha Buddicom was educated at Oxford High School, but neither she nor Blair achieved their shared dream of going to Oxford University.

When Blair left for Burma the following year, he wrote to Jacintha Buddicom complaining about his life there but she was unsympathetic to his letters and stopped writing back.

In 1927, Jacintha Buddicom gave birth to a daughter as a result of an unsuccessful affair, and gave the baby away for a childless aunt to adopt.

Blair assumed that Jacintha Buddicom was still angry with him and they did not make contact again.

Jacintha Buddicom then began a 30-year affair with a peer of the Realm.

Blair was eager for Jacintha Buddicom to come and see him, "to talk about my little son Richard", but it was too late by then, and a few months later, after her mother's death, Jacintha Buddicom slipped unnoticed into Orwell's funeral service at Christ Church, Albany Street, in 1950.

Jacintha Buddicom was at great pains to dispute the picture of childhood misery described by Orwell in his essay "Such, Such Were the Joys".

Jacintha Buddicom described him as an aloof and undemonstrative boy, and recalled him as being self-sufficient with no need of a wide circle of friends.

Jacintha Buddicom designed two Shropshire houses, and two motor-caravans for which she won prizes.