Speakers
- Colette Douglas-Home (journalist)
- Mark Douglas-Home (journalist, former editor of the Glasgow Herald)
- Linda Grant (Orange Prize-winning novelist, books include We Had It So Good)
- Matthew Parris (winner of the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2005)
- Chaired by Dame Janet Smith (chair of the Buxton Festival)
Sadly, Nick Cohen had to pull out
Details
One of George Orwell’s most famous essays, Politics and the English Language, criticises the ‘staleness of imagery’ and ‘lack of precision’, particularly in political writing, where muddled language masks insincerity. ‘If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought’. 65 years on, is it still ‘broadly true that political writing is bad writing’? What corruptions of language have appeared in the age of the internet and breaking news? What can be done to reverse the process?
Links
- George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
- George Orwell: In Front of Your Nose
- Other essays by George Orwell
- Max Dunbar: The Town Crier of the Human Soul (event review)
- Buxton Festival