Orwell's Inner Party: The Man Behind the Myth

Though he insisted that no biography of his life be written, George Orwell often told his readers who he thought he was. I do not write ‘who he was’, because the myth of Saint George has one primary author, and that is the saint himself. One rarely reads a page where a small detail of his life isn’t to be found, like a sprinkle of breadcrumbs for would-be biographers. It is a trail that seems to lead in circles, for the origins of saints and their myth’s remain elusive. But as he wrote of Gandhi, ‘saints should be judged guilty until they are proved innocent’. It is this guilt or innocence which D.J. Taylor has once again set about proving in a fresh study, Orwell: The New Life.