The writer idealised pre-industrial England: born Eric Blair, he chose the name George as it meant “farmer” in Greek and took his surname from the River Orwell in Suffolk
have been studying George Orwell’s novels and essays for almost a century, and it is well-established by now what political ideologies and ideas the writer was against. But by paying attention to one of his passions—horticulture—readers can get a sense of what he stood for, Rebecca Solnit argues in a new book. “Outside my work,” Orwell said in 1940, “the thing I care most about is gardening.”
The trees were gone, but two sturdy rose bushes remained. “They were saboteurs of my own long acceptance of a conventional version of Orwell and invitations to dig deeper,” she writes in “Orwell’s Roses”. Probing one of the paradoxes that often animate her books , Ms Solnit considers “where pleasure and beauty and hours with no quantifiable practical result fit into the life of someone...who also cared about justice and truth and human rights and how to change the world.
Though not exactly an environmentalist, Orwell’s vivid descriptions of the vast coal mines in “The Road to Wigan Pier” draw attention not just to the brutal exploitation of workers but also to environmental destruction. He wrote lyrical essays praising the homely charms of a toad, the sixpenny roses sold in Woolworths and even the British climate. Those pastoral sketches had political ends in “1984”, where Winston Smith repaired to an Edenic “Golden Country”.
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