The Life and Work of George Orwell

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Over seventy years since his premature death, George Orwell (1903-50) has become one of the most significant figures in western literature. His two dystopian masterpieces, “Animal Farm” (1945) and “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (1949) have together sold over 40 million copies. Even now, he continues to exert a decisive influence on our understanding of international power-politics.



D.J. Taylor's new biography, the first full-length study for twenty years, draws on a wide range of previously unseen material - newly-discovered letters to old girlfriends and professional colleagues, the recollections of the dwindling band of people who remember him, new information about his life in the early 1930s - to produce a definitive portrait of this complex, driven and self-mythologising man.


“If you want to know how [Orwell] became a great writer, and a tormented figure, and a national treasure, David Taylor's New Life is the doubleplusgood place to start.” ― “New Statesman”

“An astonishing verdict on George Orwell's virtues - and his vices . . . [The book] adds fresh material to give a fuller portrait of the real Eric Blair . . . it is hard to imagine him portrayed more sensitively or judiciously than he is here.” ― “Daily Telegraph”


Born in Norwich in 1960, D . J. Taylor is a writer/critic with a career spanning over thirty-five years. He is the author of twelve novels, numerous non-fiction books and acclaimed biographies of Thackeray and George Orwell, for which he won the Whitbread Biography Prize in 2003. He has also served as a judge on the Booker Prize.

Travis Elborough has been described by the “Guardian”  as “one of the country’s finest pop culture historians.” He's the author of many books, including “Wish You Were Here: England on Sea”, “The Long-Player Goodbye”, “Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles”, and “The Atlas of Vanishing Places”, which won the Edward Stanford Travel Book Award in 2020.