A review by julian12
Orwell: The Life by D.J. Taylor

5.0

D.J. Taylor’s biography of George Orwell is a richly detailed account of a life that began in the stifling world of prep-school and Eton and then became an increasingly personal voyage across disparate experiences as writing became his life. His circle of acquaintance is remarkable for its variety. His output in novels and journalism is deeply impressive. The child he is shown with on the front cover of the paperback is his adopted son. They travelled with Orwell’s sister to the windswept peace of Jura in the Inner Hebrides. Here his last illness played itself out as he worked with feverish intensity on the pages that would become 1984. I found it an ever fascinating life, fraught with contradictions and inner struggle. A man who figured as the principal character in his own drama where truth could be moulded according to his own mysterious inner promptings. I loved this story as I loved Orwell’s own remarkably personal essays Shooting an Elephant and A Hanging. I studied the well known essay on Dickens – full of insights – not all of which accorded with my own vision. Literary criticism by its very nature seems to banish the wonder I feel when studying the writings of the finest authors. For me that that balance between reason and the heart swings always towards the latter when responding to the written word as it works in sentences and phrases to conjure lives from the page. I tend to not to carp as many critics do, even when faced with the joy of sentences breathing life into thoughts, voices and vocabulary, making of words a kind of visual and aural sculpture. Although Orwell takes Greene to task for The Heart of the Matter on matters of content – the writing gives me an autonomous delight – that makes me overlook weaknesses of characterisation or intention or outlook.