George Orwell

Short History Of...

Noiser

History

4.8 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Best known for his books Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell earned a reputation as chronicler and prophet of modern society. Plagued by illness, he exposed poverty and injustice, satirised the powerful, and took up arms against fascism. Today, his name has become an adjective - ‘Orwellian’ - to express fears about totalitarian control. So, what turned this one-time servant of the British Empire into a critic of poverty and oppression? How did he almost lose his life before he’d written his most enduring works? And did this man of the left become a hero to those on the right? This is a Short History Of George Orwell. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Nathan Waddell, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature at the University of Birmingham, and author of ‘A Bright Cold Day: The Wonder of George Orwell’. Written by Edward White | Produced by Kate Simants | Assistant Producer: Nicole Edmunds | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay, Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw | Fact check by Sean Coleman Get every episode of Short History Of... a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Julie Andrews, and it is my great pleasure to bring you Jane Austen Stories,
0:06.4	the new show from the Noiser Podcast Network.
0:10.2	I'll be reading Pride and Prejudice.
0:13.6	We'll walk grand estates and take tea with well-dressed gentlewomen,
0:18.9	but in this tranquil corner of England, not everything is quite as it appears.
0:25.7	Listen to Jane Austen's stories wherever you get your podcasts.
0:31.0	It's mid-morning on a cold February day in 1936.
0:36.2	At the pit head of a coal mine in Lancashire, northwest England, eight people,
0:41.3	six men and two boys file into a lift. Once they're standing crammed together like sardines
0:50.1	in a can, the metal mesh door is slammed shut. Overhead, a mechanism whirrs into life,
0:58.0	sending the cage into the darkness beneath.
1:05.0	But none of the party are coal miners.
1:07.0	They're taking part in a guided tour
1:09.0	which has been arranged for the benefit of one among them.
1:11.6	His real name is Eric Arthur Blair, but his readers know him as George Orwell.
1:17.6	In many ways he is an unusual character, an old Ettonian and a former officer in the Indian Imperial Police Service.
1:28.3	He's now on an expedition into England's industrial heartland to capture how the other half lives.
1:39.3	900 feet below ground, the cage comes to a stop.
1:43.3	The door opens. One by one, the visitors exit to a stop. The door opens.
1:45.0	One by one, the visitors exit onto a path where dim electric lights struggle to cut through the gloom.
1:52.0	Squinting in the darkness, Orwell makes out the tunnel ahead.
1:57.0	It's less than five feet high, forcing Orwell at six foot three into an uncomfortable stoop.
	...

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