Excellently researched, but not always adequately cited. For fans of Orwell’s monolithic literary achievements Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm, Bradford’s Orwell may seem to meander and not dwell sufficiently on those major works. However, fans of his entire catalogue will be at home and truly appreciate Bradford’s work, and the chapters will feel intuitive. As for research, its clear that Bradford has done his homework as far as covering Orwell’s work and reviewing the major biographies that have already sought to do him justice. For anyone already well read on Orwell, the conclusions often applied to him don’t necessarily make major leaps. Yes he was a relatively unconvincing socialist. Yes he was most likely antisemitic, and even his eventual condemnation of the Nazis hardly disproves or contradicts this: he always seemed more against the Nazis politically than morally, and just because he was against the wholesale law extermination of a certain people doesn’t mean he didn’t look down on and discriminate against them. Even advocating for increased emigration of European Jews to Great Britain doesn’t necessarily make him not an anti-semite. It wasn’t far off the position taken by Southern US aristocrats who imported African slaves to serve as the new bottom rung of their own oligarchic society and elevate working class whites and create a common cause with upper class whites there, first in the antebellum South and later under Jim Crow. Could importing large numbers of European Jews have served as a salve between the existing classes of England, strengthening the position of the working class? No one ever asked Orwell that point blank, so we’ll never know. But it doesn’t seem that far fetched. And Bradford certainly doesn’t let Orwell off the hook on this character flaw or on several others.

However, its on drawing the parallels with our own time that the textual and source evidence becomes scant. Not that the UK doesn’t have plenty of examples of antisemitism to draw from, but Bradford fails to make the point as well as he could by continuously mistaking anti-zionism with antisemitism. They’re not the same. Period. It may be true that most antisemites are likely antizionists, and therefore espouse such positions. But being antizionist doesn’t automatically make one an antisemite, and Bradford taking offense at what are essentially failed syllogisms more often acts to derail his arguments and the narrative than anything else. Most of the failure lies in the intentionally lazy analysis of the range of ‘antizionism.’ Obviously some extreme antizionists may believe, antisemitically of course, that the Jewish faith is unique among religions in not deserving a homeland, and that it follows that the country should be eliminated. But most antizionist positions, both in Orwell’s time and today, simply push the position that there is value in a separation of church and state (as is engrained in the US constitution and many other western nation’s laws), and therefore that no religion should be put above others in any country, and also that settlements of one group of people shouldn’t be expanded and built at the expense of groups already in a place. As such, its not even an anti-Israeli position as much as it is an antinationalist position. Just like opposing Donald Trump doesn’t make one anti-American, or being anti-Boris doesn’t make one an opponent of the UK, feeling that Benjamin Netanyahu’s particular brand of aggressive non-displomacy is counterproductive doesn’t make one anti-Israeli, let alone antisemitic. Bradford completely misses the boat on this one, and in doing so fails in making his case for this particular fight being one that Orwell initially carried the torch for.

As for Orwell and to an extent his colleague Jack Common being unique in producing working class literature, or breaking ground in doing so, the failure to mention Jack London seems significant, especially considering his major influence on Orwell. Its London’s experiences in ‘Tramping’ that put the but initially in Orwell’s mind, and reading Down and Out immediately after London’s The Road makes the influence uncanny. Dismissing Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting as being more an upper and middle class portal into the working class, rather than being the authentic type of working class literature produced by and consumed by the working class isn’t entirely accurate either. The centrality of the written word in the media consumed by the masses (regardless of class distinction) had shifted seismically between Orwell’s 30’s and Welsch’s 90’s. Perhaps the lower classes in the 30’s were more likely to consumer dime novels than literary journalism like Down and Out, and Trainspotting, written in a vernacular style, is more similar to something produced by a literary scholar, like Kingsnorth’s The Wake, than it is to the 90’s equivalent of a dime novel. But Trainspotting was also adapted into a gritty indy film that subsequently became a cult classic, consumed by all classes, including the working class drug addict subculture it portrayed.

Of course, as Bradford points out, the ‘legitimacy’ of Orwell’s reportage in these various social justice themed works is hardly the point. Its that Orwell covered these topics at all, in a way that brought them to light and to the mainstream. Orwell may not have belonged to the classes he covered, or even been able to look upon them without disdain, but he did them justice by highlighting their plight. Referring to Orwell’s coverage of the northern England working class in Wigan Pier, Bradford asks “Is he disgruntled by the behavior of his native dispossessed?” As the narrator Kenji in Ryu Murakami’s In the Miso Soup would say, the native dispossessed were likely not all that gruntled themselves. But it was the situation they found themselves in, whether they liked it or not, and Orwell stuck himself there, in the working class Wigan soup, experiencing and writing about what was the normal bill of fare for these people for a readership that would never otherwise be remotely aware of it.

Bradford achieves his objective when he jumps on Orwell’s description of the English as “‘all too ready to listen to any journalist who tells them to trust their instincts and despise the “highbrow”.’ Substitute ‘experts’ for ‘highbrow,’” Bradford says, “and we are projected forward to post-Referendum Britain and the proclamations Michael Gove.” Substitute ‘Donald Trump’ for ‘Michael Gove’ and you’ve identified the illness in American politics, perhaps a more apt comparison to Orwell’s Britain: the world’s foremost power, an ostensible liberal democracy but one wracked by systemic inequalities, sitting on a precarious global throne, challenged from the doctrinal right and left. That was the British Empire in Orwell’s day, but it isn’t the UK today. It’s America.

All in all, this feels like more of a regurgitation of Orwell’s own content and analysis rather than a critical and new lense on Orwell himself or his work. Bradford even fails to make the nuanced criticism of modern pop culture that he readily observed Orwell making in the latter’s criticism of popular literature. His dismissal of David Bowie as ‘a drug-addicted, hedonistic rock star who had given little attention to recent history and literature’ is especially heavy handed, considering Bowie’s long shadow in today’s cultural zeitgeist and Bowie’s reputation for being culturally aware and concerned with justice (including racial justice, with Bowie’s criticism of MTV and their failure to play minority artists on air reminiscent of Orwell’s critique of British colonialism’s treatment of non-whites in the Empire.).

I have always enjoyed Orwell's writing, but knew little about the man himself. This was a really interesting bio, and look forward to reading more by the author in the future. I have purchased a copy for my library. Thank you!

I want a paperback copy of this book for my collection! I love George Orwell books and this book gave me a peek into who he really was. Wish I had of had this in high school when I wrote a report on him.