George Orwell’s wife wanted him to have sex with an old flame twice a year ‘just to keep him happy’, new letters reveal
- A batch of around 30 letters between Orwell and Brenda Salkeld have emerged
- He had two wives during his life, Eileen O’Shaughnessy and Sonia Brownell
- Letters have been purchased by Orwell’s son Richard Blair and will be archived
George Orwell’s first wife wanted him to have sex with an old flame twice a year in order to ‘keep him happy’ in his ‘long-suffering’ life, new letters have revealed.
A batch of around 30 letters have been discovered that chart conversations between Orwell and Brenda Salkeld.
The letters, purchased by Orwell’s son Richard Blair, will be given to an archive in London and biographers have now claimed that the contents could change the understanding of the British writer.
The Animal Farm and 1984 author penned a note to Salkeld on the day after his first wedding and he continued to write to her until 1949, days before his second wedding.
George Orwell (pictured above) was married twice and also penned letters to other women
Orwell’s first wife is claimed to have encouraged her husband to sleep with Brenda Salkeld (pictured above)
He married Eileen O’Shaughnessy in 1936 and this lasted until 1945. He married his second wife Sonia Brownell in 1949, but died weeks later.
According to the Times, one letter which was penned by Orwell four years after he married Eileen, stated that she understood his needs and wanted her husband to sleep with Salkeld.
‘She wished I could sleep with you about twice a year, just to keep me happy’, the letter read.
The letters between the author and Salkeld show how he would use her to thrash out his ideas.
Orwell married Eileen O’Shaughnessy (pictured above) in 1936 and they divorced in 1945
The revelation of this set of letters comes just months after letters between Orwell and Eleanor Jaques had surfaced.
Mr Blair has since said that he has purchased all letters from the descendants of the recipients and that he will be donating them to University College London, which is home to the George Orwell Archive.
He said it was clear the women had more influence on his father than it had previously been claimed and one letter revealed Orwell’s humiliation at Brownell’s initial rejection of him and that he only put up with it because he was ‘long-suffering’.
Earlier letters to Salkeld reveal his feelings towards her and he tells her that if she should take a love, he doesn’t see why ‘it shouldn’t be me’.
Orwell died in January 1950 and the correspondence had continued until the September before his death.
He told her he would be married again, this time to Brownell and believed she would be ‘astonished’, due to his ‘health being as it is’.
Mr Blair added that the letters had been very personal and suggested that there had been ‘physical contact from time to time’.
He added that his father liked women with a ‘strong opinion’ and it was this that attracted him to them.