There is a short period in everyones life when his character is fixed forever . . . George OrwellEric Blair stood out amongst his fellow police trainees in 1920s Burma. Nineteen years old, unusually tall, a diffident loner fresh from Eton, after five years spent in the narrow colonial world of the Raj – a decaying system steeped in overt racism and petty class-conflict – he would emerge as the George Orwell we know.Drawing on all his powers of observation and imagination, Paul Theroux brings Orwells Burma years to radiant life, tracing the development of the young mans consciousness as he confronts the social, racial and class politics and the reality of Burma beyond. Through one writer, we come to understand another - and see how what Orwell called five boring years within the sound of bugles were in fact the years that made him.