Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Quilette is where free thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself, associate editor Toby Young,

and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay. You can support our podcast by visiting

Patreon.com forward slash quellette and becoming a monthly patron. By becoming a

monthly patron you'll also receive our weekly newsletter.

Hi I'm Toby Young, one of Quilets London-based editors.

January the 23rd is the 70th anniversary of the death of George Orwell at the age of 46. To mark the occasion, I

interviewed Richard Bradford, the author of a new biography entitled Orwell, Man of Our Time.

I began by asking him why we need another biography of Orwell, given that he specifically

requested that none be written, and six have appeared already. Um, well, good question since, as I'm sure you're aware, they've always, they're already

about, what, five or six.

Mine is different because you might have seen from the blurb and the publicity material. It's not a standard biography, although it's chronological and it does

tell you the story of his life. What it also does is to project his experiences and his ideas and his hypotheses into the present day.

I'm not saying that he was a soothe say in the sense that he could predict everything that

is happening now, but there are some striking resembblances between what he saw and intuited and diagnosed

in the world of the 1930s and 40s and what we today are encountering.

Why do you feel it's necessary to try and make Orwell relevant in that way,

given that his relevant doesn't seem to be in any doubt. I mean after all my

children who are of school age are studying Animal Farm and 1984 at school. The term Orwellian has entered the English language.

1984 is frequently referenced when discussing regimes like North Korea and China, you know, some of his best lines are quoted in

current debates in Britain and elsewhere. He surely doesn't need defending in the way that you seem to be doing.

...