The author, Anna Funder is best known for her brilliant book 'Stasiland'. One day she was struggling with her writing, and life in general, so decided to pick up a book by George Orwell.

She was looking to him to gain inspiration and motivation in her own work, but found herself wondering about his personal life.

Eileen O'Shaughnessy was Orwell's wife and he leant on her heavily for daily tasks, writing support and rescuing from dangerous situations! Yet she is largely forgotten or overlooked. 

Using six newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Norah Symes Myles, Anna recreates the Orwells' marriage through the Spanish Civil war, London during the Blitz and their domestic situation. 

It's beautifully written with imagined episodes of Eileen's life woven through Anna's descriptions of her own journey as a writer - the research, her analysis of Orwell's biographers and how they have treated Eileen, and Anna's conclusions about the life of the couple.

'Looking for Eileen involved the pleasure of reading Orwell on how power works,' says Anna. 'Finding her held the possibility of revealing how it works on women: how a woman can be buried first by domesticity and then by history.'

It's a brilliantly written, fascinating book which made me want to read Orwell and the biographies again, and I will undoubtedly return to this book too.