Politics and the English Language: The life and legacy of George Orwell

Since his untimely death in January 1950, aged 46, George Orwell has been turned into a secular saint, with his Cold War-era novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four making Orwell - a democratic socialist - a hero to anti-communists across the world, but especially in England. This week, Juliet talks to critic Fatema Ahmed and writer Owen Hatherley about how and why Orwell became so revered, whether this reverence is useful, and how his writing might be reclaimed or reassessed by the contemporary British left. SELECTED REFERENCES WORKS BY GEORGE ORWELL Animal Farm (1945) Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) Homage to Catalonia (1938) ‘The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius’ (1941) - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-lion-and-the-unicorn-socialism-and-the-english-genius/ ‘My Country Right or Left’ (1940) - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/my-country-right-or-left/ Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) ‘Politics and the English Language’ (1946) - http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit The Road to Wigan Pier (1936) ‘Why I Write’ (1946) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_I_Write Theodor W. Adorno W. H. Auden Billy Bragg Russell Brand E. H. Carr Charlie Chaplin Cyril Connolly ROBERT CONQUEST, ‘George Orwell’ (1969) - http://misa-n-torpe.blogspot.com/2011/11/robert-conquest-on-george-orwell.html ISAAC DEUTSCHER, ‘1984 – The Mysticism of Cruelty’ - https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1955/1984.htm T. S. Eliot - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/26/ts-eliot-rejection-george-orwell-animal-farm-british-library-online Michael Foot - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/mar/21/past.comment Eric Gill FRIEDRICH A. HAYEK, The Road to Serfdom (1944) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom RAYNER HEPPENSTALL, Four Absentees (1960) - http://malkintowersbookblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/four-absentees-rayner-heppenstall.html CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, Why Orwell Matters (2002) - https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/books/the-independent-of-london.html Christopher Isherwood Arthur Koestler Wyndham Lewis Hugh MacDiarmid Norman Ian MacKenzie Kingsley Martin - https://spartacus-educational.com/TUmartin.htm Malcolm Muggeridge @OrwellFan - https://twitter.com/Orwell_Fan Steven Poole - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jan/17/my-problem-with-george-orwell Anthony Powell Paul Robeson Michael Sayers - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/michael-sayers-writer-whose-career-never-recovered-from-being-blacklisted-in-the-united-states-2032080.html Stephen Spender Dylan Thomas Robert Webb - https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/nov/05/russell-brand-robert-webb-revolution RAYMOND WILLIAMS, Orwell (1971)