EP63: George Orwell

George Orwell is perhaps the most important journalist and writer of political fiction of the twentieth century. Though he only lived to 47, dying of tuberculosis in 1950, he did more in half a century than most would in three of four lifetimes. Reluctantly signing up, and then ceasing to be, an imperial officer in Burma, voluntarily entering destitution in Paris, and fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell was never afraid to stare suffering and desperation right in the...