Orwell in Context: Communities, Myths, Values (review)

In a recent Times ranking of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945, George Orwell came a proud second, beaten only, rightly or wrongly, by Philip Larkin. Despite the conspicuous and contentious absence of his contemporaries Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh, Orwell's success in the ranking is telling for the rare feat he achieved: to be a critically acclaimed writer and, simultaneously, a popular one. "A writer ceases to be iconoclastic and becomes iconic when he is subsumed into the fabric of the society that he criticises," The Times argues in its note on Orwell.¹ In his case, this points to an important explanation behind his lasting popularity: that his work is read and enjoyed by readers from all walks of life and, importantly, of all political affiliations. Despite Orwell's own, professed affinity with the political left, his work has, since his untimely death in 1950, been used by politically more conservative circles, usually in order to conjure up a notion of English national identity; John Major's yearning evocation of Orwell's "old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning" in the 1990s is just one case in point.² Christopher Hitchens, in Orwell's Victory, tries to reclaim Orwell for the left by scathingly denouncing "Orwell's Albion brigade" and claiming that the "phrase 'quintessentially English', so often attached to Orwell's name, would fairly certainly have aroused his scorn."³ Hitchens's certainty in the matter is admirable; but it stands on shaky ground. The case of Orwell is by no means a simple choice of right or left. Orwell had forever aligned himself to England by the choice of his pen name—George for the patron saint of England, Orwell for a river in East Anglia; and much of his work expresses a deep love for English traditions and concern for their future. The problem today seems to be the ever increasing politicization of Englishness, which links the term almost automatically to political conservatism and to the nostalgic backwards looking of the self-satisfied bourgeoisie. This short-sighted condemnation does not take into account that Englishness is a term that has been debated for centuries by writers, thinkers, and politicians of all affiliations; and it certainly does not credit the fact that self-professed socialists can, simultaneously, be patriots. After all, Orwell himself was, in the words of his friend Cyril Connolly, "a revolutionary . . . in love with the 1900s."⁴

Ben Clarke's lucid and diligently researched Orwell in Context dedicates two chapters to the questions of national identity and Englishness. Rather than merely attempting to claim Orwell for one or the other side of the political divide, Clarke clarifies that Orwell's writing on national identity must be located "within its historical and critical contexts" and therefore he "considers both the conditions of its production and other texts on the subject" which "enables the analysis of his writing both as a set of responses to developing events and as a continuing debate on nationality and its political significance" (99). Crucially, Clarke highlights Orwell's "attempts to produce a model of radical patriotism" (99). The emphasis here is mine and reinforces the earlier statement that for Orwell it was, indeed, possible to be a socialist on the one hand, and a patriot on the other. Despite his interest in national identity and its formation, Orwell always took great pains to distinguish between patriotism (good in his eyes) and nationalism (bad): "By 'patriotism', I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people," an idealistic and, possibly slightly rose-colored view of the world that stands in stark opposition to his take on nationalism as "power hunger tempered by self-deception."⁵

Clarke precedes his analysis of Orwell's texts with an erudite investigation of the term "nation," showing the very evasiveness of it through his...