https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/why-i-write-by-george-orwell/

This is a nice collection of four essays by Orwell, three very short and one much longer, and I'm going to treat them separately.

"Why I Write"

An interesting bit of self-reflection, available here, in which Orwell starts by describing his own artistic growth, and then the impact of politics on his thoughts and words. But he finished with a description which I recognise from some writers who I have known:

“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

"The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius"

The longest essay in the book, taking up more than two thirds of the 120 pages. On the one hand, it's very much moored in the particular time it was written – 1941, when it was not at all clear who was going to win the war – and with a particular agenda in mind – the necessity and inevitability of a Socialist government which would win the war and modernise Britain. In fact, of course, the Labour victory came only after the war was over, though it's certainly fair to say that the war could not have been won without the social changes that came with it. On the other, some of Orwell's observations are simply brilliant.

“Since the ’fifties every war in which England has engaged has started off with a series of disasters, after which the situation has been saved by people comparatively low in the social scale. The higher commanders, drawn from the aristocracy, could never prepare for modern war, because in order to do so they would have had to admit to themselves that the world was changing. They have always clung to obsolete methods and weapons, because they inevitably saw each war as a repetition of the last. Before the Boer War they prepared for the Zulu War, before the 1914 for the Boer War, and before the present war for 1914. Even at this moment hundreds of thousands of men in England are being trained with the bayonet, a weapon entirely useless except for opening tins.”

When I posted that last sentence admiringly to Facebook, lots of people jumped on me with examples of successful bayonet charges since Orwell wrote; but his point is that the soldiers were not being taught anything else.

"A Hanging"

A detailed account of an execution in a jail in Burma, effectively and efficiently conveying the horror and pointlessness of the situation.

“I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the superintendent grinned in a tolerant way. ‘You'd better all come out and have a drink,’ he said quite genially. ‘I've got a bottle of whisky in the car. We could do with it.’”

"Politics and the English Language"

This is a tremendous piece on writing clearly. He is particularly interested in political writing, which he felt was especially bad:

“In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions, and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style.”

I don't know if things have improved much since Orwell's day. But his six rules for good writing should be on the wall of everyone who writes for a living, or indeed for a hobby:

“i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.” ( )

Everyone knows "Politics and the English Language" is good. Orwell's plan for a Socialist England is thorough, and more a snapshot than a map at this point. People will think this is a close parallel to the current situation but what he has written is so specific that to apply it to the current situation disrespects him. What he thought of the English national character is also clear, and useful and honest. In all his writing he sounds tired with everyone else which at least seems honest. "A Hanging" was lovely and terrifying but didn't fit at all with the rest of it. ( )

A political deep dive during WW2 by a great writer. I read it as an aspiring writer and the tip I got was. Don’t hide a bad idea with pretty words.

Fun and at least 3 times laugh out loud funny. This is a book I will probably go back to at some point to redirect my mind. ( )

I already had some idea from his other books as to how pretentious Orwell was, but if I was at all in doubt, this book displays Orwell's personality at its most elitist, arrogant and annoying. Here is a man who 'knows' how Great Britain should be responding to the events of WWII, and whose solution to everything is socialism, the sort that interestingly enough is fully realized in the current society of North Korea. With such an example as that for what Orwell's cherished system could look like in its full glory, I am glad he was not taken more seriously. His last essay in this book, from which the book gets its title, is possibly the worst writing advice I have read in a very long time. As an amusing look at a perspective that helped shape literature and society, this is an interesting book, but it is not one of Orwell's better books. ( )

If you've only read Orwell's fiction, you are doing yourself a disservice. Homage to Catalonia and this slim collection of essays, Why I Write, offer--to use the circumlocutious writing Orwell finds most deplorable--pellucid accounts from the trenches of the Spanish Civil War and from the bombing of London respectively. It is though the "ruin of all space, shattering glass and toppling masonry" only serves to sharpen Orwell's political and cultural acuity. His full-throated support of democratic Socialism in the face of burgeoning Fascism is as inspiring today as it is relevant. ( )