Over the past thirty years, I have reviewed dozens of biographies and works of literary criticism. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to rewrite some of them as blog posts, stripping them of references to the books reviewed and seeing if they work as capsule introductions to the authors in question. Here is my first such attempt, on George Orwell.

GEORGE ORWELL embodied the English qualities of independent thought, clarity of expression and intolerance of cant. As an observer o...