An examination of British culture, this remarkable account delves into George Orwell’s idea of a Tory Anarchist—someone who is concurrently a radical and a traditionalist. Filled with humorous extracts and quotes, this record explores—from Jonathan Swift to contemporary personalities—the definition of Orwell’s term, which is filled with contradictions: Tory anarchists celebrate Britain's class system but condemn all classes for their role in Britain's decline; they believe in the idiosyncratic qualities of the British while mocking their hypocrisy, stupidity, philistinism, and vulgarity. Well researched and extremely amusing, this meditation touches upon a variety of topics, including politics, literature, and social history.

"George Orwell is sometimes read as being disinterested in if not outright hostile to philosophy. Yet a fair reading of Orwell's work reveals an author whose work was deeply informed by philosophy and who often revealed his philosophical sympathies. Orwell said things of ethical significance, but he also affirmed and defended substantive ethical claims about humanism, well-being, normative ethics, free will and moral responsibility, moral psychology, decency, equality, liberty, justice, and political morality. George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality avoids a narrow reading of Orwell that considers only a few of his best-known works and instead considers the entirety of his corpus, contending that there are ethical commitments discernible throughout work that ground some of his best-known pronouncements and positions. While he is often read as a humanist, egalitarian, and socialist, too little attention has been paid to the nuanced versions of those doctrines that he endorsed and to those philosophical sympathies that led him to embrace them. George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality is the first monograph written by a philosopher that offers a reading of Orwell informed by historical and contemporary philosophy and promises to better our understanding of him and his work"--

A vivid portrait of the man behind the writings, placing Orwell and his work at the centre of the current political landscape. One of the most enduringly popular and controversial writers of the twentieth century, George Orwell's work is as relevant today as it was in his own lifetime. Possibly, in the age of Brexit, Trump, and populism, even more so. 'Doublethink' features in Nineteen Eighty-Four and it is the forerunner to 'Fake News'. He foresaw the creation of the EU and more significantly he predicted that post-Imperial xenophobia would cause Britain to leave it. His struggle with his own antisemitism could serve as a lesson to today's Labour Party, and, while the Soviet Union is gone, China has taken its place as a totalitarian superpower. Aside from his importance as a political theorist and novelist, Orwell's life is fascinating in its own right. Caught between uncertainty and his family's upper middle-class complacency, Orwell grew to despise the class system that spawned him despite finding himself unable to fully detach himself from it. His life thereafter mirrored the history of his country; like many from his background, he devoted himself to socialism as a salve to his conscience. In truth he reserved as much suspicion and distaste for the 'proles' as he did pity. He died at the point when Britain's status as an Imperial and world power had waned, but his work remains both prescient and significant.

Utopia and Dystopia in Tolkien’s Legendarium explores how Tolkien’s works speak to many modern people’s utopian desires despite the overwhelming dominance of dystopian literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It also examines how Tolkien’s malevolent societies in his legendarium have the unique ability to capture the fears and doubts that many people sense about the trajectory of modern society. Tolkien’s works do this by creating utopian and dystopian longing while also rejecting the stilted conventions of most literary utopias and dystopias. Utopia and Dystopia in Tolkien’s Legendarium traces these utopian and dystopian motifs through a variety of Tolkien’s works including The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Book of Lost Tales, Leaf by Niggle,and some of his early poetry. The book analyzes Tolkien’s ideal and evil societies from a variety of angles: political and literary theory, the sources of Tolkien’s narratives, the influence of environmentalism and Catholic social doctrine, Tolkien’s theories about and use of myth, and finally the relationship between Tolkien’s politics and his theories of leadership. The book’s epilogue looks at Tolkien’s works compared to popular culture adaptations of his legendarium.

This is the first book to focus primarily on George Orwell's ideas about free speech and related matters – freedom of the press, the writer's freedom of expression, honesty and truthfulness – and, in particular, the ways in which they are linked to his political vision of socialism. Orwell is today claimed by the Left and Right, by neo-conservatives and neo-socialists. How is that possible? Part of the answer, as Glenn Burgess reveals, is that Orwell was an odd sort of socialist. The development of Orwell's socialism was, from the start, conditioned by his individualist and liberal commitments. The hopes he attached to socialism were for a fairer, more equal world that would permit human freedom and individuality to flourish, completing, not destroying, the work of liberalism. Freedom of thought was a central part of this, and its defence and use were essential parts of the struggle to ensure that socialism developed in a liberal, humane form that did not follow the totalitarian path of Soviet communism. Written in celebration of Orwell's dictum, 'We hold that the most perverse human being is more interesting than the most orthodox gramophone record,' George Orwell's Perverse Humanity is a portrait of Orwell that captures these themes and provides a new understanding of him as a political thinker and activist. Based on archival research and new materials that affirm his work as an activist for freedom, it also uncovers a socialist ideology that has been obscured in just the way that the author feared it would be – associated in many people's minds with totalitarian unfreedom.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. A State of Play explores how the British have imagined their politics, from the parliament worship of Anthony Trollope to the cynicism of The Thick of It. In an account that mixes historical with political analysis, Steven Fielding argues that fictional depictions of politics have played an important but insidious part in shaping how the British think about their democracy and have helped ventilate their many frustrations with Westminster. He shows that dramas and fictions have also performed a significant role in the battle of ideas, in a way undreamt of by those who draft party manifestos. The book examines the work of overtly political writers have treated the subject, discussing the novels of H.G. Wells, the comedy series Yes, Minister and the plays of David Hare. However, it also assesses how less obvious sources, such as the films of George Formby, the novels of Agatha Christie, the Just William stories and situation comedies like Steptoe and Son, have reflected on representative democracy. A State of Play is an invaluable, distinctive and engaging guide to a new way of thinking about Britain's political past and present.

An introductory guide to the life, work and legacy of George Orwell - one of the most influential literary twentieth-century figures.