George Orwell plaque is defaced The plaque to the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four was on the site of what was originally a bookshop called Booklover's Corner, where Orwell (below) lived above in 1934-35. While there he wrote Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Booklover's Corner was the inspiration for passages in the novel and also the source for his essay Bookshop Memories. In February 1935 he moved to 77 Parliament Hill. The question now is who has taken Orwell's frieze image? Louise Sorling, the bakery's supervisor, told The Camden New Journal: "About two months ago a man came into the shop and was talking about its history, and asked me if I knew that Orwell's face had gone. It's a pity, because lots of people come to see the place where he worked, and it's a shame people feel they can just vandalise this part of our history. Wrecking monuments is nothing new. A Hans Christian Andersen statue in Copenhagen has been regularly defaced - and Sylvia Plath's headstone in Hepstonstall has had her married name chiseled off three times. In June this year, Wu Shan spray-painted abuse on a monument to his grandmother, the writer Bing Xin. He wrote an offensive message about her son - his father - and the messy divorce he was going through. The monument was immediately covered with a tarpaulin. Of course, A major theme of Nineteen Eighty-Four is censorship, especially in the Ministry of Truth. It's there that photographs are doctored and public archives rewritten to rid them of "unpersons." As Orwell wrote: If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever. Not in this case, it seems.