Orwell--the decent man of the left.(George Orwell)(Book Review)

From: Contemporary Review | Date: March 1, 2004| Author: | Copyright information

George Orwell. Gordon Bowker. Little, Brown. 395 pages. ISBN 0-316-86115-4.

All biographers of George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Blair) have to escape somehow from the shadow of Bernard Crick's life of the writer. Not that Crick's biography is definitive. Lots of information about Orwell and his circle, much of it gossipy but some of it significant, has come out since his book was published in 1980. It is just that Crick not only understood but also lived and breathed the left-wing politics that were at the core of Orwell's being.

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