Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux review - how Eric Blair became George Orwell

The evils of empire are brought to life in this fascinating imagining of Orwell's days as a colonial policeman, but the perspective of Burmese people is sidelined George Orwell's years as a colonial policeman in Burma in the 1920s preoccupied him for the rest of his life. Straight out of Eton, he was thrown into a world that mirrored the public school with its rivalries and floggings; except that now it was the Burmese people who were being flogged. He wrote about it repeatedly: in his 1934 nove...