Orwell: The New Life, by D.J. Taylor

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'Orwell: The New Life' by D.J. Taylor

The last word on George Orwell may never be written. Unlike most of the last century’s important authors, their ghosts largely roaming the halls of academia, Orwell continues to live in our culture. Sales of 1984 soared with the election of our previous president and it’s a wonder that Animal Farm hasn’t been banned in Florida, charged with abetting PETA.

British biographer D.J. Taylor may have thought he was finished with the subject after his award-winning 2003 account, Orwell: The Life, but he wasn’t done yet. He draws on a few new sources and two decades of mature reflection for Orwell: The New Life. Taylor brings a keen appreciation for the nuances of Britain’s class system during Orwell’s life. In identifying with the plight of the lower orders, the author sometimes tried to lower the status of his own family who were gentlefolk on a tight budget. Orwell earned his place in elite schools through academic achievement, not legacy admission. 

Taylor shows that Orwell mythologized his youth (and adulthood), not so much by lying but through carefully cultivating certain facts at the expense of others. Did his stint as a colonial police officer awaken him to the evils of imperialism? Taylor suspects that Orwell made those conclusions afterward, having left the service and its promise of a pension not from moral objections but because he had the crazy idea of becoming a writer.

The world should be happy for his choice. Orwell became the most powerful and clear-minded critic of totalitarianism, as distinguished from ordinary dictatorships, and warned of the danger of misusing language. Nowadays, the jumble of advertising and political slogans is Orwellian and the worst lies of all are being spread on a platform called Truth. Orwell would smile bitterly if he knew.