George Orwell’s gardening garb

George Orwell. In a letter to the Guardian, Orwell’s sculptor Martin Jennings explains why he plans to put the author in ‘potting-shed clothes’. Photograph: Ullstein Bild/Getty

I’ve not said that I will make George Orwell look ragged or scruffy in the statue I am making of him to go outside the BBC (Letters, 11 August). I suggested he wore potting-shed clothes. In the mid 20th century, an employed gardener might habitually have worked in a tweed jacket, a tie, baggy trousers and a comfortable pullover. So he’d have dressed much like his master except with a little less crease in his trousers and a blunter edge to his lapel. This is just how Orwell looks in all the photos and it’s how I aim to represent him.
Martin Jennings
Witney, Oxfordshire

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