Like many students around the world Darcy Moore read George Orwell’s classics Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four when he was at high school.

Many years later and now an English teacher, Mr Moore decided it would be “a huge intellectual adventure” to read Orwell’s work chronologically – starting with Orwell’s letters to his mother from boarding school.

Not only did he develop a real fascination with the writer, Mr Moore also saw “there were huge gaps in our knowledge”.

Since then, the now Dapto High School deputy principal has self-financed trips in his spare time to India, the United Kingdom, Europe and Africa to research the British novelist whose pseudonym surname has become the adjective ‘Orwellian’ to describe totalitarian and authoritarian societies and practices.

Two weeks ago, Mr Moore arrived at University College in London to receive the Peter Davison Award 2024 presented by The Orwell Society to reward outstanding achievements in uncovering new information about the life of George Orwell, whose real name was 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,” The Orwell Society said in its citation.

“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 done his research and won the admiration of full-time academics without the support of a university.”

The late Professor Peter Davison, after whom the award is named, was an English academic who compiled the most comprehensive collection of Orwell’s works and source materials.

Mr Moore said the award had encouraged him to continue “to unravel more of Orwell’s life and the impact of his experiences on his writing”.

“Our contemporary age has made it possible for anyone to publish and share their ideas. If the quality is good, others will value it,” he said.

“George Orwell writes so engagingly one can happily read and re-read his work. When you also consider how complex and paradoxical he was as a person, there is always more to think about than with the vast majority of writers. Like Shakespeare, his relevance will endure.”

Orwell, who died in 1950 at age 46, is best known as a novelist with the allegorical Animal Farm and the dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four but his work ranged through journalism, literary criticism, essays and non-fiction such as The Road to Wigan Pier about working-class life in England’s industrial north and Homage to Catalonia, his account of fighting for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War.

An intellectual rebel

Mr Moore said students today could still struggle with the bleakness of Nineteen Eighty-Four but he advocates for a deep dive into the “incredibly optimistic novel”.

“The appendix reveals that Big Brother has been vanquished, Newspeak has failed to become the lingua franca and Standard English has triumphed,” he said.

“Most readers, of any age, fail to recognise the Swiftian nature of the satire and read it as prophesy. I enjoy trying to bring this reading of his novel to life.

“Animal Farm is a completely different reading experience and I would say – along with Charlotte’s Web, The Little Prince and Jonathan Livingstone Seagull – one should not leave childhood without it.”

Mat Rhodes, Head Teacher English at Dapto High School, said Mr Moore generously shared his expertise with students, including this year’s Advanced English HSC cohort who studied Nineteen Eighty-Four.

“Darcy has always been very generous in sharing his knowledge of George Orwell with our senior English students. He always makes time to give a guest lecture to each new year group, where his extensive knowledge of Orwell’s life provides students with a unique opportunity to interact with a true expert,” he said.

“I have listened to Darcy answering even the curliest questions from students with enthusiasm. He provides interesting contextual information that students are unlikely to find anywhere else. 

“Darcy is also a big believer in sharing knowledge with the teaching community. He champions membership to the English Teachers’ Association and has had his work published in their monthly journal, Metaphor. He shares his expertise with the world through his blog.”

As part of his award from The Orwell Society, Mr Moore last week travelled to Marrakech with his friend Richard Blair, the son of George Orwell.

“My approach is to complete practical field research by familiarising myself with the geographical locations, his personal associations and the detailed chronology of his life,” he said.

“George Orwell was advised to spend the winter in a dry climate to combat his tuberculosis. This resulted in him writing Coming Up For Air in 1939 while living in Morocco. He also wrote a brilliant essay, Marrakech.”

Colleague Mr Rhodes said Mr Moore was a deep thinker and an “intellectual rebel” who advocated for the transformative power of education in the lives of young people.

“He is someone who cares about making a difference in the lives of students in public schools,” he said.

“Darcy has been a voracious reader since he was a little boy. He said that there was a poster in his primary school that read ‘Readers are Leaders’, and it inspired him to read anything he could get his hands on. He enjoys discussions with students and colleagues about books, and the ideas they contain that challenge us to think in new and exciting ways.”