GEORGE Orwell is world-famous for writing Nineteen Eighty-Four but few realise he completed the classic during treatment at a tuberculosis sanatorium near Stroud.

Orwell, whose real name was Eric Blair, was admitted as a patient to the Cotswold Sanatorium for Consumption in Cranham during 1949.

Nurse Maude Wright, who was on duty when he arrived late at night, recalled that he did not want a full dinner so she cooked him a poached egg on toast.

Despite being gravely ill, he put the final touches to Nineteen Eighty-Four using his typewriter and had it published in the USA while he was still a patient.

In a letter to friends about the Cranham facility, Orwell wrote: "I live in a co-called chalet, one of a row of continuous wooden huts with glass doors, each chalet measuring about 15 feet by 12 feet.

"There are hot water pipes, a washing basin, a chest of drawers and wardrobe, besides the usual bed tables etc. Outside is a glass-roofed veranda.

"Everything is brought by hand – none of those abominable rattling trolleys, which one is never out of the sound of in a hospital.

"Not much noise of radios either – all the patients have headphones."

While at Cranham, Orwell was given a dose of the revolutionary drug Streptomycin but suffered a violent reaction and was transferred to a London hospital.

He died a few months later in January 1950.