George Orwell's final chapter

It was in the final years of his life, gripped by illness, that George Orwell wrote his two most celebrated works, Animal Farm and 1984. In this episode of the History Extra podcast, James Osborne speaks with Robert Coles about that last chapter of the author's life, as he sought refuge on a remote Scottish island, with the growing prospect of his own death looming over him. Today I'm joined by Robert Coles, who is the author of George Orwell Life and Legacy, which is a work that really grapples with how we should try to understand Orwell in his own terms. We're going to focus on a part of Orwell's life that really stood out to me, Rob, in your book, and that is the final phase of his life from the publication of Animal Farm. through to his death.

Firstly, can you take us through Orwell's personal and professional life up to the point where Animal Farm is published? Orwell was never the great man in his own life. He was never an Orwellian in his own world. He was a jobbing journalist for most of his life, and only at the end did he become a national figure and then just before his death, shockingly, a a world figure. So the book tries to take us through the phases of his life.

Born in India, a family of the Raj, High Imperial Noon, born in 1903, came back to Henley on Thames as a little baby, brought up by his mother, father stayed in India, went to prep school. Not unusual for his class at that time, in Eastbourne, where he did really well and won a scholarship to Eden College, which, as the whole world knows, is the most important and greatest school there's ever been in the history of the universe. It says he was much happier at Eden because it gave him space. space to be who he wanted to be. And I think he was a bit of a maverick, a bit cool actually for his time, well known for his quips and jokes.

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