Keeble, Richard Lance (2012) Orwell today. Abramis. ISBN 9781845495534

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Abstract

George Orwell is today nothing less than a cultural icon. I typed Orwell into the newspaper database LexisLibrary and over a three-month period alone in the national newspapers he had been mentioned 153 times – and he’s been dead more than 60 years: Salman Rushdie could only manage 130 mentions; Martin Amis 46; Angela Carter 39. Significantly, Timothy Garton Ash in his ‘Introduction’ to Orwell and Politics (2001: xi) describes Orwell as the most influential political writer of the twentieth century. But Christopher Hitchens, who joined the Odd Squad after his post 9/11 conversion to the gospel according to George Bush, was right when he said: George Orwell requires extricating from a pile of saccharine tablets and moist hankies; since he’s become an object of sickly veneration and sentimental over-praise, employed to stultify schoolchildren with his insufferable rightness and purity (Hitchens 2002: 3).

Item Type:	Book
Additional Information:	George Orwell is today nothing less than a cultural icon. I typed Orwell into the newspaper database LexisLibrary and over a three-month period alone in the national newspapers he had been mentioned 153 times – and he’s been dead more than 60 years: Salman Rushdie could only manage 130 mentions; Martin Amis 46; Angela Carter 39. Significantly, Timothy Garton Ash in his ‘Introduction’ to Orwell and Politics (2001: xi) describes Orwell as the most influential political writer of the twentieth century. But Christopher Hitchens, who joined the Odd Squad after his post 9/11 conversion to the gospel according to George Bush, was right when he said: George Orwell requires extricating from a pile of saccharine tablets and moist hankies; since he’s become an object of sickly veneration and sentimental over-praise, employed to stultify schoolchildren with his insufferable rightness and purity (Hitchens 2002: 3).
Keywords:	George Orwell, Journalism
Subjects:	P Mass Communications and Documentation > P500 Journalism
Divisions:	College of Arts > Faculty of Media, Humanities & Performance > Lincoln School of Journalism
Depositing User:	Bev Jones
Date Deposited:	21 Sep 2012 15:02
Last Modified:	13 Mar 2013 09:14
URI:	http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/id/eprint/6241

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