style="overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">It was George Orwell’s golden-eyed toad that made me a writer. This was all the more surprising since I was getting sick of schoolteachers forever going on about Orwell the peerless master of the essay, the very model of limpid clarity; not a word wasted, the epitome of strong English prose style.