cover image George Orwell: English Rebel

George Orwell: English Rebel

Robert Colls. Oxford Univ., $34.95 (356p) ISBN 978-0-19-968080-1

In this lucid work of intellectual biography, De Montfort University cultural historian Colls (Identity of England) analyzes the political and moral evolution of Eric Blair, the self-described “Tory anarchist” better known as George Orwell. Beginning with his scholarship days at Eton, Colls tracks Orwell’s life through his work as an imperial policeman in Burma, as a reporter on labor and poverty in England, as a partisan in the Spanish Civil War, as a member of the Home Guard during WWII, and finally as a keen political observer until his death in 1950. Colls’s focus throughout is on Orwell’s political views, sorting through his ever-changing and often contradictory stances towards socialism, liberalism, Marxism, fascism, capitalism, the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and more. In close readings of such essays and novels as “Inside the Whale,” Coming Up for Air, Animal Farm, and 1984, Colls teases out Orwell’s peculiar blend of leftist conservatism, supplementing the political litmus-testing with useful historical context. Throughout, Colls ascribes Orwell’s iconoclasm to his ambivalence towards his own “Englishness”—a hazily defined sense of reserve, self-confidence, eccentricity, and nationalism that Colls argues is at the root of Orwell’s moral seriousness and political prescience. Though copious footnotes and a bibliographical postscript surveying Orwell’s critical reception suggest a book meant for academics, Colls’s engaging style and frequent bursts of astringent wit make for lively reading suitable for any Orwell enthusiast. (Jan.)