‘Orwell’ Review: A Fresh Biography of Truth’s Champion

George Orwell, the inventor of the Ministry of Love and Room 101 in “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” was married for the second time in Room 65 of University College Hospital in London. His sickbed was not far from Senate House, the building that had inspired the Ministry of Truth. The groom was dying of tuberculosis and wore a crimson corduroy jacket. The bride, Sonia Brownell, had been the model for Julia from the Fiction Department. After the service, she and the witnesses left for lunch at the Ritz. One hundred days later, on Jan. 21, 1950, Orwell was dead, aged 46.