How does an author nearly 60 years dead become a celebrity blogger? And how did an author who left explicit instructions that he did not want his life dissected in biographies end up baring his soul online, daily in handwritten diary form?

From tomorrow (9th August), the private diaries of George Orwell are being digitized and put online by the people behind the Orwell Prize (for political writing). Marking the 70th anniversary of the diaries themselves, the site will document his life on a day-to-day basis, taking the start point of his recuperation from a lung haemorrhage in Morocco (“Morocco seems to me a beastly dull country”) then moving into the War, where his opinions on the fall of Europe will be recounted in real time. Concerned with the domestic as well as the political, the Orwell diaries promise to be a truly fascinating insight into the mind of one of our greatest authors. Be interesting to see how it fares against Perez Hilton blogging about Lindsay Lohan… (RT)

Click here to see the first part of BBC’s fantastic Orwell documentary “A Life In Pictures”.