Status
Collection
Publication
Description
Biography & Autobiography. History. Politics. Nonfiction. HTML:A New York Times bestseller! A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 A dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, who preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike. Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930'sâ??Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and in deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. In a crucial moment, they responded first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then they acted on their beliefs. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's compass set toward freedom as its due north. It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930's, democracy was discredited in many circles, and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini "men we could do business with," if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign, but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedomâ??that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted. In the end, Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of the 1940's to triumph over freedom's enemies. And though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course, and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks's masterful hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin. Churchill and Orwell is a perfect gift for the holi… (more)
Media reviews
User reviews
---George Orwell
This was an almost perfect read for me. It is concise and insightful and well written. It loses half a star because Ricks at times overstated his case. I loved the format which
"The last article George Orwell would ever complete and publish was a review of the second volume of Churchill's war memoirs, Their Finest Hour. He was appreciative of the politician, despite the vast difference in their political views:
"The political reminiscences which he has published from time to time have always been a great deal above average, in frankness as well as in literary quality. Churchill is among other things a journalist, with a real if not very discriminating feeling for literature, and he also has a restless, enquiring mind, interested in both concrete facts and in the analysis of motives, sometimes including his own motives. In general, Churchill's writings are more like those of a human being than of a public figure."
My favorite parts of the book were those that focused on Orwell, but then I have a thing for Orwell, and I have read a lot of his writing. Ricks does an excellent job of showing how Orwell'w writing grew with his life's experiences, and how Spain was a turning point for him:
"What he saw in the Spanish Civil War in 1937 would inform all his subsequent work. There is a direct line from the streets of Barcelona in 1937 to the torture chambers of 1984....Orwell, arriving home, had become the writer we know today from Animal Farm and 1984. Burma had made him an anti-imperialist, but it was his time in Spain that developed his political vision and with it the determination to criticize right and left with equal vigor. Before Spain, he had been a fairly conventional leftist, arguing that fascism and capitalism were essentially the same. Until this point, Orwell still clung to some of the views of the 1930s left. He would leave Spain resolved to oppose the abuse of power at both ends of the political spectrum."
The book is a mere 339 pages (with the last 60 of these being the notes and acknowledgements), but it packs a punch. Well worth your time if you are at all interested in the subject. Ricks has put together a unique and very interesting narrative that will pull you right into its pages.
Orwell barely survived WWII and Churchill lived long after asa succesful author but an unsuccesful politician.
The book is not long and very readable. I learnt little about Churchill from it; more about Orwell but really not much. The better part of the book is in its wrap-up and conclkusions
From the mid-1920s onward, aristocratic politician and writer Winston Churchill was a right-wing democratic capitalist.
For an earlier take on this topic, see The Two Winstons, the final episode of Simon Schama's great documentary, A History of Britain.