The Peter Davison Award 2024 Winner

Darcy Moore (left) receives a PDA slate from George Orwell’s son, Richard Blair

The Trustees of The Orwell Society are proud to announce the winner of the Peter Davidson Award in the second year of the Award:

Darcy Moore

Independent Scholar

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Australian researcher and writer Darcy Moore, whose Orwell studies span more than a decade, was the recipient of the Peter Davison Award 2024 by The Orwell Society in an event held at University College, London, on Thursday 24th October, 2024. Darcy Moore has followed the example of Peter Davison and independently financed his extensive primary research in Europe and India, while being Deputy Head of a school in New South Wales and being a family man. He has done his research and won the admiration of full time academics without the support of a University. Peter Davison was one of the first to recognise Darcy’s unique approach.

Now in its second year, the Peter Davison Award – named after the author of the most comprehensive collection of Orwell works and source materials ever assembled – was established to reward outstanding achievements in uncovering new information about the life of George Orwell – real name Eric Arthur Blair.

Darcy Moore, whose blog is considered among the finest resources for Orwell studies in the world, receives the Peter Davison Award for 2024 in recognition of his decades of work in finding new primary source material dating back to before Eric Blair’s birth in India in 1903. Moore has revealed previously unknown details about Blair’s Anglo-Indian family and found material from much later in his life when, as George Orwell, he spent much of World War II at the BBC in London, broadcasting to India.

He has also found significant new information relating to Eric Blair’s time spent in Paris, from which Blair wrote his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, and the wider family history of Eric Blair. His family research has found primary source material highlighting the vital role played by one of Blair’s aunts in fostering his early writing career.

Recognising Moore’s great achievements over decades of research, Quentin Kopp, chair of The Orwell Society, said that he has “made more new discoveries than any other contemporary researcher”.

Moore has received acclaim from noted Orwell experts, including Professor Richard Keeble, editor of renowned academic journal George Orwell Studies, who has praised his “enormous contribution to the development of our knowledge of Orwell”.

The Award 2024

Mr Moore will receive £1000, and a trophy engraved on Welsh slate, mined close to the Vale of Ffestiniog where George Orwell and his son spent Christmas 1945 with Arthur Koestler and his wife.