Churchill and Orwell by Thomas E. Ricks: book review

Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom (2017) is a biography of two men: Sir Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England from 1940-1945 and from 1951-1955; and Eric Blair who wrote under the nom de plume George Orwell, the writer of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four – who’s hero was called Winston.

Churchill (1874-1965) and Orwell (1903-1950) never met each other, although they had a common cause – which is the premise of this biography – that of freedom. One was an extroverted wartime politician and writer and the other was an introverted intellectual author: ‘Their shared cause was to prevent the tide of state murder that began rising in the 1920s and 1930s, and crested in the 1940s, from continuing to rise.’ Both had been war correspondents. Churchill covered the Boer War of 1899-1902 and Orwell covered the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939.

The biography begins with Churchill, the death of his father Randolph when Winston was 20 years old; his philandering mother Jennie; his early years as a cavalry officer; his love of historical literature; his years as a war correspondent; and the beginnings of his rise to power. For Orwell, Ricks focuses on his years as an officer of the Imperial Police in Burma from the age of 19-24, and the influences of his pursuit of a core theme: the abuse of power. For Churchill, the 1930s was his time in ‘the political wilderness.’ For Orwell, ‘what he saw in the Spanish Civil War in 1937 would inform all his subsequent work.’

The remainder of this biography focuses on the 1940s. In the first five years of the 1940s, Churchill is the wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain with the remaining years campaigning to become Prime Minister for a second period. Orwell kept a wartime diary, and from it rose his most enduring works on the ‘menace of authoritarian rule’ – Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). For both, the goal was freedom.

I found the narratives on Churchill compelling, but those on Orwell less so. However, the most interesting aspects were what the two famed men were doing when they were not working at what they were famous for – Churchill in between his prime ministership and Orwell in between his authorship. ‘Like Churchill, Orwell would emerge from the war a partially broken man. Orwell’s deterioration would prove more evident than Churchill’s, and more devastating. The writer would grow increasingly ill as he labored on his last book, which would prove his most durable.’

Ricks attempts to pull the threads of their clothing together through the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nineteen Eighty-Four’s hero is a middle-aged Englishman named Winston Smith. It is a book about the ‘the all-seeing state’ of electronic surveillance (nowadays it is CCTV) where objective reality does not exist. Winston’s occupation in the novel is rewriting history. However, Winston is not a direct link to Winston Churchill, because the character is more like Orwell himself. Nevertheless, Ricks spends considerable time discussing the rise of Orwell to the present day.

As the book Nineteen Eighty-Four rose in popularity and acclaim, Orwell’s health declined. He died in 1950. Churchill, on the other hand, although old and declining, was intent on a second term as Prime Minister. Ricks focuses the remainder of the book on a comparative analysis.

Dual biographies are difficult as one person will always take the limelight over the other: Churchill the extrovert over Orwell the introvert, Churchill the politician over Orwell the propagandist. A comparative analysis can often lead to tenuous links, which is sometimes the case in this biography. However, overall this is a well-researched and well-written account of the importance of freedom in the lives of two celebrated men – during their lifetime and as a lifelong legacy.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).