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The John Batchelor Show

2/4: The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War by Peter Stansky (Author)

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

Books, News, Society & Culture, Arts

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary


2/4: The Socialist Patriot: George Orwell and War by Peter Stansky (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Socialist-Patriot-George-Orwell-War/dp/150363549X

An incisive demonstration of how Orwell's body of work was defined by the four major conflicts that punctuated his life: World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War. Few English writers wielded a pen so sharply as George Orwell, the quintessential political writer of the twentieth century. His literary output at once responded to and sought to influence the tumultuous times in which he lived—decades during which Europe and eventually the entire world would be torn apart by war, while ideologies like fascism, socialism, and communism changed the stakes of global politics.

1936 Spain

Transcript

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0:00.0

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AC. UK. This is a

0:50.0

CBS I in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Professor Peter Stansky of Stanford University. His new book is The Socialist Patriot. These are revelations about George Orwell,

0:56.0

aka Eric Blair. The name George Orwell is a pseudonym chosen that the occasion of its

1:02.4

first novel memoir, Down and Out in London in

1:06.5

Paris, between Leaving Eaton in December of 21 and the publication in 1933 of Down and Out in London and Paris.

1:15.0

George Orwell spends five years in Burma as a representative, an official, an authority, an enforcer of the empire.

1:25.0

And in that time he shaped opinions of the empire he was serving.

1:29.0

And Professor, to call George Orwell an anti-imperialist, is that sufficient, is that correct about

1:36.1

what was developing in Burma?

1:38.1

Yes, yes, I think it is.

1:42.2

I think what's exaggerated or some people write that all I return from Burma convinced

1:50.8

anti-Imperialist. I think he had doubts. All those transitions are

...

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