Orwell

George Orwell started writing regularly for the Observer in 1942, filing stories from the home front and North Africa. In 1945, he was sent to France and Germany as a war correspondent. This volume collects for the first time all of these articles. Writing from Paris, Cologne and Stuttgart, Orwell reports on the moment of victory in 1945; considers the impact of the occupation on French domestic and foreign policies; and reports with acute insight on the future of a ruined Germany. The articles extend to contemplate the eight years of war in Spain and the new danger presented by Britain's former ally, the Soviet Union. Also, included in this collection are Orwell's book reviews. With typical clarity and precision, he appraises the work of his contemporaries and the key authors of the 1940s, including Julian Huxley, H.G. Wells and T.S. Eliot. He also reviewed F.A. Hayek's The road to serfdom and the new translations of Dostoevsky's Crime and punishment and The brothers Karamazov, as well as the poetry and the work of Joseph Conrad and Sean O'Casey. These reviews and articles are as exhilarating to read today as they were when first written. Orwell's writing shaped the Observer--his essay 'Politics and the English language' was used as the house style and rule book--and continues to influence many journalists. These collected pieces demostrate unequivocally not only why George Orwell is considered to be the greatest political writer of the twentieth century, but why he has also been described as the patron saint of journalism.