Volume 7, Number 10 · December 15, 1966
Orwell "in Life"
By V.S. Pritchett
The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell
by George Woodcock
Little, Brown, 366 pp., $6.95
The eccentric, the crank, and the thorn in the flesh turn up regularly in British life and in war many of them come into their own. This was certainly true of George Orwell, who, in addition, was two persons: the suppressed figure of Eric Blair, once a police officer in Burma, old Etonian, and poor Scot, briefly soldier of misfortune in the Spanish Civil War; and George Orwell, amateur outcast, Bohemian, and journalist who, as Herbert Read said, raised journalism to the dignity of literature. He was a familiar London figure in BBC circles during World War II—he was in charge of broadcasts to India—in the Soho pubs, the offices of Horizon, and in many districts where poor writers settled in those hungry and seedy times. There is a considerable Orwell anecdotage. It was impossible to know such a complex, straying, and contradictory man well, but George Woodcock, who became a friend after the usual quarrel which established one with Orwell, gives a good account of his personal spell, and has written a very penetrating personal study.
Review, 1405 words
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