Literature Network » George Orwell

The extreme anti-extremist Jonathan Bate compares two biographies - one a scholar's, the other a novelist's - that mark the centenary of George Orwell's birth

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20030518
Author:JONATHAN BATE

George Orwell

by Gordon Bowker

Little, Brown, pounds 20, 495 pp

pounds 18 ( pounds 2.25 p&p) 0870 155 7222

Orwell: The Life

by D. J. Taylor

Chatto & Windus, pounds 20, 446 pp

pounds 18 ( pounds 2.25 p&p) 0870 155 7222

GEORGE ORWELL embodied the English qualities of independent thought, clarity of expression and intolerance of cant. As an observer of social deprivation and a rebel against Edwardian conformity, he was admired by the political left. At the same time, he wrote the definitive satire on Stalinism (Animal Farm) and one of the greatest of all novels about totalitarianism (Nineteen ...

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