 Orwell's brother-in-law, Humphry Dakin, the husband of Orwell's elder sister Marjorie, a 'short, stout, loquacious' man, thought that Bowling might be a portrait of him.He had known Blair (Orwell) since they were youngsters, when the Blairs lived at Henley-on-Thames and later when they lived at Southwold where he married Marjorie.In their 1972 study of Orwell, "The Unknown Orwell", the writers Peter Stansky and William Abrahams described the novel as "Wellsian".