Since his untimely death in January 1950, aged 46, George Orwell has been turned into a secular saint, with his Cold War-era novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four making Orwell - a democratic socialist - a hero to anti-communists across the world, but especially in England. This week, Juliet talks to critic Fatema Ahmed and writer Owen Hatherley about how and why Orwell became so revered, whether this reverence is useful, and how his writing might be reclaimed or reassessed by the contemporary British left.

SELECTED REFERENCES

WORKS BY GEORGE ORWELL

Animal Farm (1945)

Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

‘The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius’ (1941) - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-lion-and-the-unicorn-socialism-and-the-english-genius/

‘My Country Right or Left’ (1940) - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/my-country-right-or-left/

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

‘Politics and the English Language’ (1946) - http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit

The Road to Wigan Pier (1936)

‘Why I Write’ (1946) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_I_Write

Theodor W. Adorno

W. H. Auden

Billy Bragg

Russell Brand

E. H. Carr

Charlie Chaplin

Cyril Connolly

ROBERT CONQUEST, ‘George Orwell’ (1969) - http://misa-n-torpe.blogspot.com/2011/11/robert-conquest-on-george-orwell.html

ISAAC DEUTSCHER, ‘1984 – The Mysticism of Cruelty’ - https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1955/1984.htm

T. S. Eliot - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/26/ts-eliot-rejection-george-orwell-animal-farm-british-library-online

Michael Foot - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/mar/21/past.comment

Eric Gill

FRIEDRICH A. HAYEK, The Road to Serfdom (1944) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom

RAYNER HEPPENSTALL, Four Absentees (1960) - http://malkintowersbookblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/four-absentees-rayner-heppenstall.html

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, Why Orwell Matters (2002) - https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/29/books/the-independent-of-london.html

Christopher Isherwood

Arthur Koestler

Wyndham Lewis

Hugh MacDiarmid

Norman Ian MacKenzie

Kingsley Martin - https://spartacus-educational.com/TUmartin.htm

Malcolm Muggeridge

@OrwellFan - https://twitter.com/Orwell_Fan

Steven Poole - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jan/17/my-problem-with-george-orwell

Anthony Powell

Paul Robeson

Michael Sayers - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/michael-sayers-writer-whose-career-never-recovered-from-being-blacklisted-in-the-united-states-2032080.html

Stephen Spender

Dylan Thomas

Robert Webb - https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/nov/05/russell-brand-robert-webb-revolution

RAYMOND WILLIAMS, Orwell (1971)