Lewis
uses the device of traveling to tell Orwell’s life story – a brilliant idea
that brings the writer’s life to life in a completely fresh way.
As someone who loves travel writing and loves Orwell’s writings, this book got me as close to walking with Orwell as I am ever likely to get.
Lewis starts in his journey in the pretty obscure town of
Motihari, northern India, where Orwell was born, and follows him to Eton
College, Burma, Paris, Hampstead, Wigan, Catalonia, Marrakech, and Jura, among
other places.
In the three days it took me to read this compelling book, I felt I was
living Orwell’s life and understood his motivations and contradictions from the
inside.
A travelogue exploring the life and work of George Orwell through the places he lived, worked and wrote
Following in the footsteps of his literary hero, researcher and historian Oliver Lewis set out to visit all the places to have inspired and been lived in by George Orwell.
Over three years he travelled from Wigan to Catalonia, Paris to Motihari, Marrakesh to Eton, and in each location explored both how Orwell experienced the place, and how the place now remembers him as a literary icon.
Beginning in Northern India, where Orwell was born in 1903, and ending in the Oxfordshire…
George
Weidenfeld was a giant of the publishing world in the second half of the
twentieth century.
Harding tells
Weidenfeld’s story, from birth in Vienna in 1919 to death in London in 2016,
through the lens of 19 of the books that Weidenfeld brought (or didn’t bring) into
being throughout his career. As a device for a biography, this is sheer
genius.
By telling the story of Berlin’s The Hedgehog and the Fox, Watson’s The Double Helix and the book that never
was – Mick Jagger’s autobiography – and many others, Thomas Harding reveals the
controversies, scandals, elite parties, and political handshakes that
Weidenfeld, a refugee from Nazi Austria in August 1938, attracted throughout
his life.
My evening hour of reading turned into two, three, or four hours, as I needed to know what came next.
Born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1919, George Weidenfeld fled to England in 1938 to escape the Nazi regime. There he began a career in publishing that would make him one of the most influential figures in the industry. Over the course of his long and illustrious career he championed some of the most important voices of the twentieth century, from Vladimir Nabokov, Mary McCarthy and Saul Bellow to Harold Wilson, Isaiah Berlin and Henry Kissinger.
But what do we know about the man himself? Was he, as described by some, the 'greatest salesperson', 'the world's best networker',…
We all know the story of the Cuban missile crisis,
right? Wrong!
You have to read Plokhy’s powerful narrative
of the events in October 1962 before you can understand how and why the drama
unfolded.
Plokhy
tells it from the Soviets’ perspective, accessing rarely-seen KGB documents and
participant interviews. This story is at
once political drama, military strategy, Cold War espionage, and a lesson in contrasting
leadership styles – Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro – and Plokhy brilliantly captures
the tension and high-stakes decision-making.
I was two years old when these
events shook the world, but having finished the book, I felt like I was in the
room – in both rooms, Washington and Moscow – when it happened. This experience
will live with me for a long time.
*Shortlisted for the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History*
'An enthralling account of a pivotal moment in modern history. . . replete with startling revelations about the deception and mutual suspicion that brought the US and Soviet Union to the brink of Armageddon in October 1962' Martin Chilton, Independent
The definitive new history of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the author of Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize
For more than four weeks in the autumn of 1962 the world teetered. The consequences of a misplaced step during the Cuban Missile Crisis could not…
The changing climate poses serious dangers to human and non-human life alike, though perhaps the most urgent danger is one we hear very little about the rise of climate.
Too many social, political, and ecological problems facing the world today - from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the management of wildfires - quickly become climatized, explained concerning a change in the climate.
When complex political and ethical challenges are so narrowly framed, arresting climate change is sold as the supreme political challenge of our time, and everything else becomes subservient to this one goal.
