So who the heck is Eric Blair? That's the real name of George Orwell, author of 1984! An incredibly unremarkable tombstone, isn't it? Apparently he just asked for a simple English burial, and so a friend of his buried him in his family cemetary in the village of Sutton Courtenay. He died at the age of 46 of tuberculosis. You can read more about George/Eric here.
As always, it was fun to wander around the nice medieval church (it was closed so didn't get to go inside) and cemetary, and read the interesting tombstones. A church cat came out and kept us company for awhile, and there was a nice thatched-roof house nearby. Apparently Sutton Courtenay has been inhabited since 6,000 BC. Whoa.
On our way back home, we drove through Abingdon, a town 8 miles from Oxford. It also had a nice medieval church, plus a pretty river (the Thames, looking especially calm and nice), a historic county hall, an old city gate, ruins of an abbey in a park, and a nice Mini!
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