George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eight-Four, remains today, more than 60 years since his death, a cultural icon. He is reviled and admired by the Left and Right - and all persuasions in between. To academics too, he is a constant source of fascination - being one of the most researched writers of all times. Orwell Today, edited by Richard Lance Keeble, Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln, brings together the writings of nine leading Orwell scholars - offering new and sometimes controversial insights into the man whom Timothy Garton Ash described as the 'most influential political writer of the twentieth century'. The essays are divided into three sections: 'Orwell: The personal and the political', 'Orwell and the media' and 'Orwell's politics - paradoxes, appropriations and problematics'.
They include: * Kristin Bluemel on 'The intimate Orwell: Women's productions, feminist consumption' * Nick Hubble on 'Lessons in autobiografiction for the Twenty-First Century' * Adam Stock on 'Of pigs and men: The politics of nature in the fiction of George Orwell' * Beci Dobbin on 'Orwell's squeamishness' * John Tulloch on 'Sceptic in the palace of dreams: Orwell as film reviewer' * Tim Crook on 'George Orwell: Cold War radio warrior?' * Philip Bounds on 'Learning from his enemies: George Orwell and British communism' * James Winter on 'The myth of Orwell: The Canadian press and its Orwellian use of Eric Arthur Blair' * Richard Lance Keeble on 'Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four and the spooks'