Churchill and Orwell

Two men nearly died in the mid-1930s. George Orwell was shot in the neck in a trench line during the Spanish Civil War, and Winston Churchill was struck by a car in New York City. Had either died then, history would barely remember him: Churchill was a politician out of favour, his loyalty to class and party doubted, and Orwell was a modestly successful novelist.

This dual biography follows both men from the mid-1930s through the 1940s. Thomas E. Ricks looks at a time when democracy had lost credibility in many circles and authoritarian rulers were gaining ground across Europe. Some people condemned communism yet saw Hitler and Mussolini as men they could do business with. Others judged fascism a danger but looked to communism for salvation.

Churchill and Orwell stood apart from both camps. They held that the real issue was human freedom, and that any government denying its people basic liberties had to be resisted, whatever its political colour. For a time each held a lonely position.

The book traces how both worked against the enemies of freedom in the 1940s. Churchill played the larger part in defeating Hitler and the Axis, while Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 shaped the stakes of the Cold War. It is a biography built around two parallel lives and the cost of holding to conviction.