Welcome to The Orwell Foundation’s library of works about George Orwell and his writing, consisting of material exclusive to this site and links to external sites.
We continue to add to the library, so please get in touch if you find any good work about Orwell online. Pages behind paywalls are indicated with a ‘£’. Please consider making a donation to help us maintain these resources for readers everywhere.
GEORGE ORWELL (GENERAL)
- The George Orwell Archive
- Orwell at the BBC
- Orwell at Penguin
- Crick, Bernard, ODNB Biography of George Orwell
- UCLTV, George Orwell’s Last Christmas Card (2016)
ORWELL'S LIFE
- Anthony, Andrew, Orwell: the Observer years, The Observer (2003)
- Garton Ash, Timothy, Orwell’s List, New York Review of Books (2003) (£)
- Barnes, Julian, Such, such was Eric Blair, NYRB (2009) (£)
- Bates, Stephen, Odd clothes and unorthodox views – why MI5 spied on Orwell for a decade, The Guardian (2007)
- Bissell, Norman, George Orwell: The Socialist Who Loved Nature (video) (2011)
- Blair, Richard, Richard Blair in conversation with D. J. Taylor (video) (2009)
- Bowker, Gordon, Orwell’s London (2008)
- Bowker, Gordon, The Biography Orwell Never Wrote (2008)
- Bowker, Gordon, Orwell on the S. S. Stratheden (2008)
- Bowker, Gordon, The Road to Morocco
- Bowker, Gordon, Orwell’s Library
- Bowker, Gordon, When Orwell did a Kilroy, The Guardian (2004)
- Bowker, Gordon, A paranoid rebel with tattoos on his knuckles, The Guardian (2007)
- Cavendish, Dominic, The other George Orwell, The Daily Telegraph (2011)
- Crick, Bernard, George Orwell – Voice of a Long Generation, BBC History (2011)
- Crowley, John and Mukherjee, S Romi, Orwell’s people (video) (2010)
- Davison, Peter, A Life in Letters (video)
- Davison, Peter, Correspondence Between Orwell and P. G. Wodehouse
- Davison, Peter, Orwell’s Morocco Diaries
- Durlacher, Chris, George Orwell: A Life in Pictures (video) (2003)
- Durlacher, Chris, George Orwell: A Life in Pictures Q&A (video) (2010)
- Freeguard, Gavin and the Orwell Youth Prize, Exclusive Interview with Richard Blair, Orwell’s Son (2016)
- Harding, Luke, Shadows of Orwell, The Guardian (2000)
- Heitman, Danny, George Orwell, Outdoorsman, NEH (2019)
- Hitchens, Chistopher, Orwell’s list, NYRB (2002) (£)
- Le Dréau, Christopher, George Orwell, icône de l’Europe unie (video) (French) (2010)
- Pritchett, V S, Orwell ‘in Life’, NYRB (1966) (£)
- Taylor, David, Orwell: A Brief Life
- Taylor, David, An Oxfordshire Tomb
- Taylor, David, Orwell’s Face
- Taylor, David, Orwell’s Voice
- Taylor, David, Orwell and Waugh, with Paula Byrne (video)
- Taylor, David, Defeat into victory, New Statesman (2009)
- Taylor, David, Last days of Orwell, The Guardian (2000)
- Taylor, David, Another piece of the puzzle: Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s letters, The Guardian (2005)
- Taylor, David, Richard Blair in conversation with D. J. Taylor (video)
- Thomson, Gordon, The House where Big Brother was Born (New Statesman)
- Tranmer, Jeremy, Big brother watching friends and foes? (video) (2010)
- Travis, Alan, How a real Big Brother kept an eye on George Orwell, the bohemian communist (2005)
ORWELL'S LEGACY
- Akala, Doublethink: Interview An Interiew with Akala
- Armstrong, Stephen Back on the road to Wigan Pier: politics and poverty in the UK
- Garton Ash, Timothy, Orwell in 1998, NYRB (1998)
- Garton Ash, Timothy, Orwell for our time, The Guardian
- Atwood, Margaret, Orwell and me, The Guardian
- Atwood, Margaret, My hero: George Orwell, The Guardian
- Barnville, John, Good man, bad world, NYRB (2002)
- La gauche hétérodoxe et la réception d’Orwell en France (video) (French)
- Brendon, Piers, The saint of common decency, The Guardian (2003)
- Campbell, Beatrix, Wigan Pier and beyond: “So who is Orwell for?”
- Capet, Antoine, George Orwell and the ‘phoney left’, 1939-1945 (video) (2010)
- Davison, Peter, Nightmare in Poland Street (video) (2010)
- The Economist, George Orwell: The master’s voice (2003)
- The Economist, Orwell centenary: Blair-mania (2003)
- Esteves, Olivier, Orwell, l’empire colonial et l’opinion publique britannique (video) (French) (2010)
- Foot, Michael, An instinct for the future, The Guardian (1986)
- Foot, Paul, By George, they’ve got it, The Observer (2003)
- Gourevitch, Phillip and Self, Will, Phillip Gourevitch and Will Self on George Orwell (2007)
- Harper, Alastair, George Orwell, patron saint of hacks, Prospect (2010) (£)
- Hitchens, Christopher, Why Orwell Matters (2003) Read an excerpt here
- Hitchens, Christopher and Conan, Neal, George Orwell Turns 100¸(2003)
- Karydaki, Danae, Orwell and Post-truth Politics (2017)
- Lucas, Scott and Taylor, David, Orwell: saint or stooge? Email exchange with D. J. Taylor (The Guardian) (2003)
- Marr, Andrew, Words and Things, Prospect (1996) (£)
- McCrum, Robert, Why it’s hard to conjure the spirit of Orwell (The Observer) (2009)
- McCrum, Robert, George Orwell and the eternal truths of good journalism (The Observer) (2003)
- Rodden, John and Hitchens, Christopher, Christopher Hitchens and John Rodden on Orwell, on Think Tank (YouTube video, part 1 of 3) (2010)
- Seaton, Jean, George Orwell at the BBC (2017)
- Spender, Stephen, The Truth about Orwell, NYRB (1972)
- Vervaecke, Phillipe, Orwell as heritage – commemorations of Orwell in contemporary Britain, c. 1994-2010 (video) (2010)
- Walter, Nicolas, The clean smell of Orwell, Prospect (1998) (£)
- Wheatcroft, Geoffrey, St. George’s shroud, Prospect (2000) (£)
- Wheatcroft, Geoffrey, George at 100, Prospect (2003) (£)
- The School of Life, George Orwell (2016)
ORWELL'S NON-FICTION
- Davies, WH, Confessions of a down and out (2013)
- Davison, Peter, Note on The Road to Wigan Pier
- Hobsbawm, Eric, Intellectuals and the Spanish Civil War (2007)
- Kermode, Frank, The sharpest thorn, New York Review of Books (2007)
- Larkin, Emma, Extract from Finding George Orwell in Burma (NPR) (2010)
- Martin, Dolores, George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, Rethinking the Spanish Civil War (video) (2010)
- McKie, David, When fact is really fiction, The Guardian (2003)
- Packer, George, Down and Out at the New Yorker Book Club, The New Yorker (2009)
- Paxman, Jeremy, Introduction to Shooting an Elephant: The genius of George Orwell, The Daily Telegraph (2015)
- Pimlott, Ben, Introduction to Orwell’s England
- Taylor, David, Beware the revolution, The Guardian (2004)
- Taylor, David, The ever-longer road to Wigan Pier: extract from afterword to Orwell: The Life
- Venables, Dione, Orwell – Plain Speaking and Hidden Agendas
- Walton, James, What a Carry On!
ORWELL'S FICTION
- Fiction Predictions, 1984 in 2019, (podcast, Mashable UK)
- British Pathé, The making of Animal Farm cartoon, (video, British Pathé) (1955)
- Aaronovitch, David, 1984: George Orwell’s road to dystopia, BBC News Magazine
- Brush, Colin, ‘It was a bright cold day in April…’
- Cavendish, Richard, Publication of 1984, History Today (1999)
- Cavendish, Dominic, Coming Up for Air revisited – Orwell, England and the idea of escape (video) (2010)
- Cohen, Karl F, Halas and Batchelor’s Animal Farm and the CIA (Animation World Network) (2003)
- Cohen, Karl F, The cartoon that came in from the cold (abridged version of the above, The Guardian (2003)
- Crace, John, The digested classic: Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Guardian(2008)
- Davison, Peter, Introduction to Burmese Days preliminaries
- Denis, Sebastien, La ferme des animaux revisitée – sur deux films et un album (video) (French) (2010)
- Etchart, Julio, Burmese Days Revisited (2009)
- Evers, Stuart, You don’t get to choose your literary heroes – Gordon Comstock, The Guardian (2008)
- The Guardian, Review of Nineteen eighty-four, The Guardian, (10 June 1949)
- Harris, Robert, Robert Harris Discusses George Orwell’s 1984 – Faulks on Fiction, BBC (2011)
- Hitchens, Christopher, Nineteen Eighty-Four 60 years later, (audio, NPR) (2004)
- Katwala, Sunder, How not to succeed – an introduction to Keep the Aspidistra Flying, The Observer (2003)
- Larkin, Emma, Introduction to Burmese Days
- Lefait, Sébastien, « The Big Screen is watching you » (video) (French) (2010)
- Lucas, Scott, Nineteen Eighty-Four: timeline (eNotes)
- Lynskey, Dorian, Nineteen Eighty-Four at 70, The i (2019)
- McCarthy, Mary, The writing on the wall with responses from Richard Rees andGabriel Jansicas, NYRB (1969) (£)
- McCrum, Robert, 1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell, The Observer (2009)
- Nakamura, Asami, Adapting Nineteen Eighty-four, The Luminary (2016)
- Owen, Paul, 1984 thoughtcrime? Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot?, The Guardian (2009)
- Pimlott, Ben, Introduction to 1984
- Power, Nina, Bamboozle, baffle and blindside, New Statesman (2009)
- Pritchett, V S, The most honest writer alive: review of 1984, New Statesman (2009)
- Taylor, David, The Best George Orwell Books, interview with Five Books (2019)
- Taylor, David, Orwell and the Rats
- Taylor, David, The Road to 1984 (video)
- Taylor, David, Orwell Reflects on Big Brother
LITERARY CRITICISM
- Face-to-face encounters in Orwell’s early works (video) by Marina Rémy Abrunhosa
- Baxendale, John, Orwell and Priestley – two ways of being a left-wing writer in 20th Century England (video) (2010)
- Bayley, John, The last Puritan, NYRB (2001) (£)
- Byrne, Paula, Orwell and Waugh, with D. J. Taylor (video) (2010)
- Cowley, Jason, George Orwell’s luminous truths, Financial Times (2014)
- Cox, Alan, A reading of ‘An Incident in Rangoon’ (video) (2010)
- Crick, Bernard, Orwell as a comic writer
- Eagleton, Terry, Reach-Me-Down Romantic, London Review of Books (2003)
- Hastings, Rob, There’s more to George Orwell than politics, The Guardian (2010)
- Leys, Simon, The Intimate Orwell, NYRB (2011)
- Kerr, Douglas, Orwell, Kipling and Empire
- Packer, George, Reading Orwell, The New Yorker (2009)
- Rae, Patricia, Modernist Orwell (video) (2010)
- Saunder, Loraine, George Orwell – A Master of Narration
- Trilling, Lionel, George Orwell and the Politics of Truth: Portrait of the Intellectual as a Man of Virtue (1952)
- Trotter, David, ‘I say, damn it, where are the beds?’, London Review of Books (2017) (£)
THE ORWELL PRIZE & THE ORWELL FOUNDATION
- Gill Furlong, Ryan Kiggell and Jean Seaton, on Burmese Days, UCL Podcast (2009)
- BBC Radio 4 John Humphrys and Jean Seaton on BBC Radio 4 Today (video) (2009)
- Gamble, Andrew, Sir Bernard Crick, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2012)
- Hitchens, Christopher, Review of Crick’s Autobiography “What people do not want to hear”, New Statesman (2013)
- Lalwani, Nikita, Nikita Lalwani on judging The Orwell Prize (2013)
- Lawrence, Felicity, People want original investigative journalism more than ever, The Guardian (2017)
- O’Toole, Fintan, George Orwell’s idea of a better England is stirring today, The Guardian (2017)
- Renton, Alex, Christmas pudding a la Orwell, The Guardian (2009)
- Ross, Peter, Saving Orwell, The Boston Review (2017)
- Seaton, Jean and Taylor, David, Jean Seaton and D. J. Taylor on Orwell’s women on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour (2009)
- Seaton, Jean, How The Times silenced the voice of valuable frontline reporter, The Guardian (2009)
- Thorpe, Vanessa, Grayson Perry goes north to help make Britain whole again, The Guardian (2017)
ORWELL'S VALUES
- Davison, Peter, Orwell – Religion and Ethical Values
- Dewitte, Jacques, Orwell, un conservateur-libéral-socialiste? (video) (French) (2010)
- Gessen, Keith, ‘Eternal Vigilance’, New Statesman (2009)
- Goodman, Giora, George Orwell and the question of Palestine (2010)
- Gray, Robert, Orwell vs God, The Spectator (2011)
- Naftali, Timothy, George Orwell’s List, New York Times (1998)
- Packman, Carl, Orwell the Rorschach Test (Though Cowards Flinch) (2011)
- Richards, Paul, From Tory Anarchist to Democratic Socialist (LabourList) (2009)
- Roast, Jean-Jaques, Ni anarchiste ni tory – Orwell et « la révolte intellectuelle » (video) (French) (2010)
- Westwood, Richard, Battle of Vera Brittain versus George Orwell (Tribune) (2011)
OTHER
- Annan, Noel, Artist in politics, NYRB (1981) (£)
- Holdefer, Charles, ‘As surely doomed as the hippopotamus’ (video) (2010)
- Jeffries, Stuart, What would George Orwell have made of the world in 2013? The Guardian (2013)
- Kruch, John, Literary Pilgrimages: George Orwell, New York Times (1998)
- Krotoski, Aleks, 1984 in pictures, one word at a time (Flickr)
- Mackenzie, Sophie, George Orwell’s hot and cold British menu, The Guardian (2011)
- Maslen, Joseph, Inside the Whale of British Communism (2010)
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