This very readable and informative biography of George Orwell focuses on his adult life, culminating in his last novel, “ Nineteen Eighty-four” ( referred to here as“1984”).

In the year 1984, the long-deceased author was criticised for failing to foresee how technical advances would benefit ordinary people, and being unduly pessimistic about the threat of political leaders crushing freedom. Forty years on, the book seems more relevant now with even “democratically” elected populist leaders like Trump using “alternative facts” and “fake news” to achieve their ends, while the Chinese Communist Party “moulds model citizens” by means of technical surveillance combined with a system of rewards and punishments, reminiscent of the telescreens used to indoctrinate and spy on the inhabitants of Airstrip 1 in “1984”.

Dorian Lynskey makes us aware of the many writers engaged from the late c19 century in attempts to imagine the future, notably H.G.Wells with his “social fantasies” , and the Russian Zamyatin with a ringside view of tyranny, author of “We”. Although they clearly infuenced Orwell, to the extent that he was accused of plagiarising the latter in “1984”, the main point seems to be that important ideas were being explored.

In his development of the manipulative leader “Big Brother”, Orwell’s main motivation was not to predict what he defined as a “pessimistic utopia” (i.e. non-existent place, the word “dystopia”, not being in common use until a decade after his death in 1950). He did not seek to be a prophet of doom, nor did he turn against socialism in later life as some of his opponents liked to think. “1984” was simply intended as a warning against governments which suppress freedom by gaining excessive control over people’s lives, and stifling opposition. As he dictated just before his death from TB in early 1950, “Don’t let it happen. It depends on you”.

Orwell saw the effects of distorting the truth first-hand when fighting against Franco in the Spanish Civil War, where he naively joined an anarchist brigade, following rejection by the better-equipped Communist forces because he was thought “unreliable”, for being one of the first to question the Moscow “show trials”. In a chaotic Barcelona, he met a Russian called “Charlie Chan”, thought to be an agent of Stalin’s secret police, who tried to stir up an already unstable situation by claiming that anti-Franco anarchists were really trying to aid the dictator!

Orwell obtained much useful material from those who wrote about their experiences of totalitarian regimes. He probably came across formula “2+2=5” in the work of Eugene Lyons, who turned against Communism when he witnessed “the propaganda, persecution and industrial-scale dishonesty” during a visit to the USSR to interview Stalin. Ironically, several publishers initially declined to print “Animal Farm”, for fear of offending Stalin, a Second World War ally at the time. Needless to say, “1984” was fiercely attacked by readers from the far left, and delighted those from the right, who failed to grasp that Orwell was attacking repression of all political types.

The coining of the term “Orwellian” by Mary McCarthy, together with the adoption of such terms as “Newspeak”, “doublethink”, “thoughtcrime”, “unperson” and “Big Brother” have become embedded in our culture, but I had not appreciated the extent of the writer’s influence since his death on a surprising variety of people, as covered here in somewhat rushed and indigestible detail. Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” was inspired by “1984”. Artists like David Bowie made abortive plans to produce a musical version of “1984”. In the run-up to the year 1984, commercial products from Macintosh computers to sisal-look wool carpets were promoted via references to Big Brother – that is, a book warning against controlling people was used to manipulate them.

Orwell’s complex personality is revealed through numerous anecdotes and quotations. He once wrote to a friend, “I find that anything outrageously strange ends up by fascinating me even when I abominate it”. He was a remarkably hard-working journalist and writer which he somehow combined with a very active social life. “His conversation was like his writing, unaffected, lucid, witty and humane”. He loved to argue, and was surprised when a writer, whether a friend or a celebrity like H.G.Wells, was upset by a barbed comment in one of his reviews. He gave 1984 ’s Winston Smith his own pathological fear of rats, which once led him to fire his rifle at the wrong moment, alerting the enemy Spanish who destroyed his side’s cookhouse. He was married twice and had close women friends, but created a wooden character lacking an inner emotional life in the form of Julia in “1984”. This could of course have served to indicate the damaging effects of being brought up under Big Brother’s domination. Orwell chose to write “1984” on the bleakly beautiful Scottish island of Jura, well out of reach of the hospitals where he needed treatment. With nostalgia for an idealised pre-1914 past, he detested every aspect of modern American culture.

He wrote just after the Second World War, “No thoughtful person whom I know has any hopeful picture of the future”. Ill health may have depressed his spirits – but what would he have made of the world today – not least virtual reality machines?