Orwell – The Life (book review)

Title :- Orwell – The Life

By :- D.J. Taylor

Published :- Vintage, Great Britton 2003 Paperback (450 pages).

Outline :- Follows the life of Orwell, from the small middle class of England with good schooling he set out on a very distracted life. Bumming around England and Europe he struggled to write several novels that looked into the common people of the industrial revolution. He joined the Spanish war with the Internationals against the Spanish fascists and their German allies, and was wounded. This prompted another book that peered into the world of spies, deception along with the real barstedary of war. He was denied military service in the Second World war because of hi earlier wound. However he was called upon to initiate a number of BBC interviews with significant people of character that had fled Eastern Europe etc, and thereby give sympathizers hope that they had not been forgotten. Orwell had retained his bohemian life style since his earliest days, and so had contacts with Eastern University professors and leading poets and cultural figures that he could bring to the BBC for such interviews. Indeed this form of interview was the pioneer that eventually lead to people such as David Frost and such. After the war Orwell wrote the simple book “Animal Farm” that was taken up by America and the West as a leading school text against communism, and so he became a successful international author. His whole life he had weak lungs, and he passé away a week after his last book “1984” was published, This book seems to bring to a panicle his ability to define peoples fundamental characters in such a manner that even a child can see through it. The frightening reality is that his awareness of state control over people can be seen today in so many places around the world, and as an element in all political societies.

In my opinion this is the story of a seemingly fringe dweller of formal society, that has contributed to ongoing generations of human understanding and appreciation far more than say Henry Ford’s automobile.