George Orwell's final chapter
4/30/202640 min
Did you know that George Orwell only found national acclaim as an author in the final years of his life, as his health was worsening? Or that, with the growing prospect of death looming increasingly large, he sought refuge on a remote Scottish island? Historian Robert Colls tells James Osborne about these last stages of Orwell's life, and the toll that writing his two most celebrated works – Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four – took on the author.
GO BEYOND THE PODCAST To find out more about George Orwell, listen to our Life of the Week episode profiling the author, with historian Laura Beers: https://bit.ly/4d6ka7D Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Speaker 10:28
[gentle music] It was in the final years of his life, gripped by illness, that George Orwell wrote his two most celebrated works, Animal Farm and 1984. In this episode of the History Extra podcast, James Osborne speaks with Robert Coles about that last chapter of the author's life as he sought refuge on a remote Scottish island with the growing prospect of his own death looming over him.
James Osborne· Host0:59
Today I'm joined by Robert Coles, who is the author of George Orwell: Life and Legacy, which is a work that really grapples with how we should try to understand Orwell in his own terms. We're gonna focus on a part of Orwell's life that really stood out to me, Rob, in your book, and that is the final phase of his life from the publication of Animal Farm through to his death. Firstly, can you take us through Orwell's personal