George Orwell
course 2024

Mondays, weekly, 8 April to 6 May 2024, 6.00-8.00 pm UK Summer Time

More than any other writer of the twentieth century, Orwell made his name synonymous with the big questions which define the modern world. What does power look like? What does freedom entail? How can we help each other to live honest, decent lives?

Orwell prized his lifelong ability to ‘face unpleasant facts’; his curiosity and restless intelligence helped him scythe through humbug. Yet while his work identifies important problems, it doesn’t provide neat solutions to them. Indeed, Orwell never claimed to have the answers: he was eternally alert to his own eccentricities, contradictions, and failings. He hated snobbery, yet nursed a deep snobbery within himself. His down-to-earth manner masked a fierce intellectual vanity. Above all, though he was political to his bones, he never found a party line with which he could wholeheartedly agree. Having spent decades honing his craft and attempting, as he put it, ‘to turn political writing into an art’, he concluded that his foibles and inconsistencies were too closely entwined with his ideas ever to be eradicated. Perhaps that’s why, on the page, Orwell is unfailingly good company; frequently surprising, sometimes infuriating, never boring.

In this course we will explore five of Orwell’s most compelling books and the big ideas behind them. Along the way, we will try to rediscover the real Orwell – the man behind the talismanic name. What can his work tell us about the era of war, revolution, and upheaval through which he lived? And what, if anything, can he tell us about our own fractured times?

Our lecturer is Dr Lisa Mullen, Senior Teaching Associate in English and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge.

Five sessions, Mondays, weekly, 8 April to 6 May 2024, 6.00-8.00 pm UK Summer Time