Behind the Eyes of Big Brother: George Orwell and the English Sensibility

George Orwell was much more than the author of two of the 20th century’s most important novels – 1984 and Animal Farm – he was also a prolific essayist and cultural critic who managed to describe the English character with abiding accuracy. The talk will reveal how Orwell was a man of contradictions who reinvented himself several times yet retained a deep affection for England and Englishness. As a political animal, Orwell believed sincerely in the innate decency of ordinary men and women and in their ability to determine their own future.