Churchill and Orwell
As liberty and truth are increasingly challenged, the figures of Churchill and Orwell loom large. Exemplars of Britishness, they preserved individual freedom and democracy for the world through their far-sighted vision and inspired action, and cast a long shadow across our culture and politics.
In Churchill & Orwell, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas E. Ricks masterfully argues that these extraordinary men are as important today as they ever were. They stood in political opposition to each other, but were both committed to the preservation of freedom. In the late 1930s they occupied a lonely position: democracy was much discredited, and authoritarian rulers, fascist and communist, were everywhere in the ascent. Unlike others, they had the wisdom to see that the most salient issue was human liberty – and that any government that denies its people basic rights is a totalitarian menace to be resisted.
Churchill and Orwell proved their age’s necessary men, and this book reveals how they rose from a precarious position to triumph over the enemies of freedom. Churchill may have played the larger role in Hitler’s defeat, but Orwell’s reckoning with the threat of authoritarian rule in 1984 and Animal Farm defined the stakes of the Cold War and continues to inspire to this day. Their lives are an eloquent testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it takes to stay true to it.
Thomas E. Ricks is the bestselling and award winning author of The Gamble, The Generals, and the international bestseller Fiasco, 'the most authoritative account of how the Bush administration and the US Army created a disaster in Iraq' (Max Hastings, Sunday Times). He is a former writer for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and has covered military operations across the globe. He now contributes to The New York Times and the New Yorker, and has appeared on the BBC, Sky News and in The Guardian and other UK press. He is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine, writing the prize-winning blog The Best Defense.