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George Orwell: English Rebel
An intellectual who did not like intellectuals, a socialist who did not trust the state, a liberal who was against free markets, a Protestant who believed in religion but not in God, a fierce opponent of nationalism who defined Englishness for a generation.
Aside from being one of the greatest political essayists in the English language and author of two of the most famous books in twentieth century literature, George Orwell was a man of profound contradictions. George Orwell: English Rebel takes us through the many twists and turns of Orwell's life and thought, from precocious, public school satirist at Eton and imperial policeman in Burma, through his early years as a rather dour documentary writer, and his formative experiences as a volunteer soldier in the Spanish Civil War.
Robert Colls traces, in particular, Orwell's complex relationship with his country, from the alienated intellectual of the mid-1930s through a gradual reconciliation, to the exhilarating peaks of his wartime writing. He explores the mistakes and contradictions, the lucky escapes and near misses, and what they tell us about Orwell as man and author.
Aside from being one of the greatest political essayists in the English language and author of two of the most famous books in twentieth century literature, George Orwell was a man of profound contradictions. George Orwell: English Rebel takes us through the many twists and turns of Orwell's life and thought, from precocious, public school satirist at Eton and imperial policeman in Burma, through his early years as a rather dour documentary writer, and his formative experiences as a volunteer soldier in the Spanish Civil War.
Robert Colls traces, in particular, Orwell's complex relationship with his country, from the alienated intellectual of the mid-1930s through a gradual reconciliation, to the exhilarating peaks of his wartime writing. He explores the mistakes and contradictions, the lucky escapes and near misses, and what they tell us about Orwell as man and author.
342 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
7 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
Robert Colls
18 books3 followersRobert Colls is Professor of Cultural History at De Montfort University, Leicester. Before that he was Professor of English History at Leicester University.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 21, 2013
In George Orwell: English Rebel, a book that is part biography, part literary criticism, Robert Colls evaluates his subject through the lens of Orwell’s “Englishness.” It is a fresh approach for discussing a man who has had many books written about him, but not much addressing his relationship with his country and national identity.
Orwell lived in turbulent times. He is of course best known for writing Animal Farm and 1984, books that attack totalitarianism. What is less well known is that he also frequently wrote about little cultural details, like naughty picture postcards or
how to make the perfect cup of tea. In Colls’s view, this aspect of Orwell kept him anchored in what he calls a “belly-to-earth” way, even when tackling, and at times encouraging, socialist revolution. In 1984, a novel concerned with larger and darker themes, we see how Winston Smith is drawn to commonplace objects like a glass paperweight. Orwell never lost his grounding in ordinary life, no matter what the topic was, and he considered it worth preserving.
Colls is helpful in giving the details of the political backdrop in Orwell’s day, information which can otherwise be a little fuzzy to readers, particularly American ones, more than 60 years after Orwell’s death. Orwell is considered a leading political writer, but his writing rarely addressed the nitty-gritty facets of electoral politics. His focus was on big picture concepts. This emphasis helps keep Orwell’s writing relevant today, but he could also be vague when it came to translating political ideas into reality. Colls brings Orwell down to earth on some of the issues, helping us see where Orwell, master of plain speaking and plain writing, was wriggling out of having to explain how his political concepts would actually work.
Colls also looks at Orwell’s relationship to his class and elucidates the nuances of 1930s British class divisions for modern readers. Orwell was a champion of the working class, but never of it, and was never completely able to shake his “lower-upper-middle-class“ upbringing and accent (see The Road to Wigan Pier, ch. 8), nor his Eton education. Colls also discusses regional variations in the north and south of England at the time and how those played into Orwell’s views.
I appreciated Colls’s analysis of the novel Coming Up for Air. While this is probably one of Orwell’s better novels technically, it has never interested me as much as the others, even weaker books like Keep the Aspidistra Flying and A Clergyman's Daughter. Colls’s interpretation helped with that, putting the novel into the context of the 1930s class system with nuances that had previously been foreign to me as an American in the 21st century.
Colls relies a bit too much on Orwell’s book/pamphlet
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (1941) to justify his theories about Orwell’s political views. It is true that this is one of the few places where Orwell lays out explicitly what he means by socialism and socialist revolution, and certainly it serves as a useful reference for Colls’s discussion of Orwell’s Englishness. In 1949, though, Orwell listed this book as one that was he did not want reprinted (see Orwell/Davison A Patriot After All: 1940-1941 pg. 391). The reasons for that are not entirely clear, but he listed it along with Keep the Aspidistra Flying and A Clergyman’s Daughter, two books he was not proud of. It is reasonable to believe that by that time The Lion and the Unicorn no longer represented Orwell’s definitive take on socialism.
George Orwell: English Rebel is also weaker when playing the parlor game of What Would Orwell Say? The final section gets bogged down in whether, if he had lived, Orwell would have been a Cold War warrior or neo-Conservative or New Left or socialist or Tory anarchist, etc., etc. Of course it is impossible to know what exactly Orwell would have said about issues he couldn’t have envisioned, and the further the matters in question are from his lifetime, the more speculative this game becomes. If we take his actions during his life as a guide, I suspect Orwell would have shied away from labels and would have changed and refined his positions over time, throwing in a few twists to keep biographers guessing.
A copy of this book for review was provided by NetGalley/Oxford University Press.
Orwell lived in turbulent times. He is of course best known for writing Animal Farm and 1984, books that attack totalitarianism. What is less well known is that he also frequently wrote about little cultural details, like naughty picture postcards or
how to make the perfect cup of tea. In Colls’s view, this aspect of Orwell kept him anchored in what he calls a “belly-to-earth” way, even when tackling, and at times encouraging, socialist revolution. In 1984, a novel concerned with larger and darker themes, we see how Winston Smith is drawn to commonplace objects like a glass paperweight. Orwell never lost his grounding in ordinary life, no matter what the topic was, and he considered it worth preserving.
Colls is helpful in giving the details of the political backdrop in Orwell’s day, information which can otherwise be a little fuzzy to readers, particularly American ones, more than 60 years after Orwell’s death. Orwell is considered a leading political writer, but his writing rarely addressed the nitty-gritty facets of electoral politics. His focus was on big picture concepts. This emphasis helps keep Orwell’s writing relevant today, but he could also be vague when it came to translating political ideas into reality. Colls brings Orwell down to earth on some of the issues, helping us see where Orwell, master of plain speaking and plain writing, was wriggling out of having to explain how his political concepts would actually work.
Colls also looks at Orwell’s relationship to his class and elucidates the nuances of 1930s British class divisions for modern readers. Orwell was a champion of the working class, but never of it, and was never completely able to shake his “lower-upper-middle-class“ upbringing and accent (see The Road to Wigan Pier, ch. 8), nor his Eton education. Colls also discusses regional variations in the north and south of England at the time and how those played into Orwell’s views.
I appreciated Colls’s analysis of the novel Coming Up for Air. While this is probably one of Orwell’s better novels technically, it has never interested me as much as the others, even weaker books like Keep the Aspidistra Flying and A Clergyman's Daughter. Colls’s interpretation helped with that, putting the novel into the context of the 1930s class system with nuances that had previously been foreign to me as an American in the 21st century.
Colls relies a bit too much on Orwell’s book/pamphlet
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (1941) to justify his theories about Orwell’s political views. It is true that this is one of the few places where Orwell lays out explicitly what he means by socialism and socialist revolution, and certainly it serves as a useful reference for Colls’s discussion of Orwell’s Englishness. In 1949, though, Orwell listed this book as one that was he did not want reprinted (see Orwell/Davison A Patriot After All: 1940-1941 pg. 391). The reasons for that are not entirely clear, but he listed it along with Keep the Aspidistra Flying and A Clergyman’s Daughter, two books he was not proud of. It is reasonable to believe that by that time The Lion and the Unicorn no longer represented Orwell’s definitive take on socialism.
George Orwell: English Rebel is also weaker when playing the parlor game of What Would Orwell Say? The final section gets bogged down in whether, if he had lived, Orwell would have been a Cold War warrior or neo-Conservative or New Left or socialist or Tory anarchist, etc., etc. Of course it is impossible to know what exactly Orwell would have said about issues he couldn’t have envisioned, and the further the matters in question are from his lifetime, the more speculative this game becomes. If we take his actions during his life as a guide, I suspect Orwell would have shied away from labels and would have changed and refined his positions over time, throwing in a few twists to keep biographers guessing.
A copy of this book for review was provided by NetGalley/Oxford University Press.
February 8, 2014
Can't seem to decide if it is a biography or a study and suceeds as neither. Not well organized, though does make good case for Orwell's essential Englishness.
April 4, 2016
It took me a long time to finish this book which read more as a thesis than a biography for the general public! I was frequently irritated by the author's determined development of his thesis but, nevertheless, I learned much about Eric Blair in all his light and shade, in all his contradictions. But pity the poor writer who is pilloried for changing/evolving opinions because they have been committed to paper! Not many of us would stand the contradictions test over our lifetimes if our opinions had been recorded.
February 23, 2016
Some interesting material but I found Colls' approach to be a bit obscure and a bit irritating. It's an intellectual biography rather than an account of Orwell's life, but it mystifyingly passes over elements of his life and then mentions them in passing. Some sections feel more like summaries of the books and essays than any sort of analysis of them.
August 29, 2023
Astounding work. I'm currently reading 'Animal Farm'; and wanted to get a bit of background on Orwell. Didn't know his actual name is Eric Arthur Blair. In fact, his tombstone only has his original name.
He'd served as a policeman in Burma. And yet only a short time. He left that job to become a writer. Was interested in the conditions of the working class - and wrote a book on his journey to explore their life: 'The Road to Wigan Pier'. Fought in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was a man of contradictions. He made a point of being against any isms; and yet identified himself with the left. When asked why he was always criticizing leftist intellectuals and never right wing intellectuals he replied that there were no right wing intellectuals. He left his job as a policeman in Burma because he was disgusted with what he had experience of colonialism; and believed that Britain's colonial work was the act of a conman stealing what does not belong to him.
From my much earlier reading of 1984 I remember that the government would suddenly completely reverse itself in its relationships with other nations. One day a friend or enemy, the next the complete opposite. So, I was astounded to discover that for quite some time prior to World War II; Eric Blair was outspoken in his opposition to the future war effort. But suddenly, it may have been the invasion of Poland, Blair makes a complete about face and is suddenly not only a big supporter of England's War effort - but he is vigoursly arguing against positions he'd vigorously defended.
Disgusted by the way communists undermined the effort in the Spanish American War he was ever after a huge critic of communism.
Glad I read this.
'
He'd served as a policeman in Burma. And yet only a short time. He left that job to become a writer. Was interested in the conditions of the working class - and wrote a book on his journey to explore their life: 'The Road to Wigan Pier'. Fought in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was a man of contradictions. He made a point of being against any isms; and yet identified himself with the left. When asked why he was always criticizing leftist intellectuals and never right wing intellectuals he replied that there were no right wing intellectuals. He left his job as a policeman in Burma because he was disgusted with what he had experience of colonialism; and believed that Britain's colonial work was the act of a conman stealing what does not belong to him.
From my much earlier reading of 1984 I remember that the government would suddenly completely reverse itself in its relationships with other nations. One day a friend or enemy, the next the complete opposite. So, I was astounded to discover that for quite some time prior to World War II; Eric Blair was outspoken in his opposition to the future war effort. But suddenly, it may have been the invasion of Poland, Blair makes a complete about face and is suddenly not only a big supporter of England's War effort - but he is vigoursly arguing against positions he'd vigorously defended.
Disgusted by the way communists undermined the effort in the Spanish American War he was ever after a huge critic of communism.
Glad I read this.
'
June 7, 2020
Some years ago it occurred to me that the things we call Orwellian don’t reflect what George Orwell, as a social and political thinker, believed in. But I was far from clear on what he did believe in, and I read this book in part to find out. (I also read it as background for reading a biography of his first wife, which an acquaintance of mine was working on, and which has now been published. More on that at another time.) What Orwell believed in is effectively the real subject of this book, which looks at him from the standpoint of his Englishness, and it turns out to be hard to pin down. In fact, Orwell’s contrariness, his shifting stances, his contradictions, his un-pin-down-ability, may be his essential quality. A glancing reference on the last page of the notes comparing Orwell with Simone Weil, who was also profoundly contradictory, is illuminating, but only if you know her thought; the title of a biography of her, calling her a “utopian pessimist,” is usefully suggestive. As for Orwell himself, he was indeed, as the back cover of my advance reading copy suggests, “an intellectual who did not like intellectuals, a socialist who did not trust the state, a liberal who was against free markets, a Protestant who believed in religion but not in God, and a fierce opponent of nationalism who defined Englishness for a generation.” Robert Colls’s study contains those summations and many more like them. Orwell as a concept appears to be problematic but endlessly alluring, and this book is an excellent account of what makes him so.
December 18, 2025
George Orwell: English Rebel by Robert Colls is a struggling but persistent attempt to place George Orwell’s written works and personal philosophy into the context of the English intellectual milieu of the mid-20th century. Colls mounts an obsessive quest to put a label on Orwell, liberal, Liberal, conservative, Tory, whatever, which Colls admits on page 193, “…it is hard to find a consistent political voice in Orwell.” Then why bother? So, this book is not in any sense a conventional biography. It’s not bad. But if you’ve read lots of Orwell and have already thought deeply about the themes and observations from his vast & varied experiences, you won’t likely discover much new in this analysis.
May 20, 2018
I liked learning about Orwell, but wish the book were more about him as a person/his personal life, rather than a commentary on his politics. (This was probably my own fault for not researching more about the purpose of the book.). I got kind of lost because of my lack of background in British politics, and I felt a little bit like the author didn't have any real admiration for Orwell. I loved what I did learn, though.
May 28, 2019
An entertaining and thought-provoking biography of George Orwell focussing on his Englishness. Exhaustively researched and genuinely interesting and illuminating
June 9, 2020
Great for those Orwell Geeks (myself), who want to understand how his books connect to his life and mind whilst writing.
January 31, 2020
A thread by Gëtt Kaz
Started reading this #GeorgeOrwellEnglishRebel by #RobertColls published by #OxfordUniversityPress in 2013. This thread serves the purpose of recording #SharonSharonSharonLiReadingNotes
I can’t believe it is from this book that I finally learned about George Orwell’s real name😆 which is Eric Blair by the way. He wrote Animal Farm in 1945, and 1984 in 1948/1949, and he passed away in 1950.
Guess when writing becomes your career, you may not find yourself being successful in it when you’re alive, which is actually quite normal. He’s very different from what I imagined. Usually I don’t read biographies of writers who wrote those books I like. I’ll try to avoid saying “writers that I like” as well. It just feels like, I like the book itself after reading it, but it doesn’t mean I’ll like the writer
Just very weird ways of seeing things I guess. I like the book after reading it, but I don’t actually know the author. And it feels like I can never know them through documents. Anyway, this biography mentioned many things that I couldn't believe done by Orwell. It just feels unreal.
Started reading this #GeorgeOrwellEnglishRebel by #RobertColls published by #OxfordUniversityPress in 2013. This thread serves the purpose of recording #SharonSharonSharonLiReadingNotes
I can’t believe it is from this book that I finally learned about George Orwell’s real name😆 which is Eric Blair by the way. He wrote Animal Farm in 1945, and 1984 in 1948/1949, and he passed away in 1950.
Guess when writing becomes your career, you may not find yourself being successful in it when you’re alive, which is actually quite normal. He’s very different from what I imagined. Usually I don’t read biographies of writers who wrote those books I like. I’ll try to avoid saying “writers that I like” as well. It just feels like, I like the book itself after reading it, but it doesn’t mean I’ll like the writer
Just very weird ways of seeing things I guess. I like the book after reading it, but I don’t actually know the author. And it feels like I can never know them through documents. Anyway, this biography mentioned many things that I couldn't believe done by Orwell. It just feels unreal.
October 1, 2016
A good book, but unevenly distributed.
As a literary critique it reads excellently, it gives clear consideration to Orwell's ideas, and excellent accounts of the contradictions inherent in Orwell's writing, and does its best to explain where and why these exist.
It is however frustrating as a biography. Large sections of Orwell's life are only briefly mentioned, sometimes skimming whole years very quickly, in favour of local literature trends, or comparisons to other authors of the time. It also only very rarely mentions Orwell's human activities. His time in Burma is spoken about in only a way contextualising his thoughts on Empire, and the section on the Spanish Civil War is used only as a tool to discuss the war itself in the context of European leftism. The author teases us by talking about Orwell's romantic liaisons, without ever giving any direct information about them. These are details that I would like to understand, but which fail to materialise. Often referred to, but rarely explained.
In short it is unevenly interesting, beautifully sourced, and a clear understanding of the work of the subject matter is given, but I wouldn't recommend it for someone looking for a biography of Orwell.
As a literary critique it reads excellently, it gives clear consideration to Orwell's ideas, and excellent accounts of the contradictions inherent in Orwell's writing, and does its best to explain where and why these exist.
It is however frustrating as a biography. Large sections of Orwell's life are only briefly mentioned, sometimes skimming whole years very quickly, in favour of local literature trends, or comparisons to other authors of the time. It also only very rarely mentions Orwell's human activities. His time in Burma is spoken about in only a way contextualising his thoughts on Empire, and the section on the Spanish Civil War is used only as a tool to discuss the war itself in the context of European leftism. The author teases us by talking about Orwell's romantic liaisons, without ever giving any direct information about them. These are details that I would like to understand, but which fail to materialise. Often referred to, but rarely explained.
In short it is unevenly interesting, beautifully sourced, and a clear understanding of the work of the subject matter is given, but I wouldn't recommend it for someone looking for a biography of Orwell.
January 13, 2015
A must-read for Oswell's fan
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews