From the moment we open the pages of George Orwell: A Reader’s Approach it is clear that the author has a deep affection for his subject - the brilliant left-wing novelist and essayist who gave the world Homage to Catalonia, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Here is an intriguingly personal view of a maverick Englishman, an eccentric genius and anti-Establishment, anti-Imperialist figure who turned away from his privileged public school background and focused on the other side of England and her Empire - poverty, brutality, prejudice and jingoism.

G. Wesley McCullough takes us through Orwell’s maze of near-Dickensian characters, outlines his plots, points out his inconsistencies, yet praises his passion for life and causes and his intense involvement in the world he knew. With plentiful original quotation, the text offers us rich glimpses of Orwell’s literary style - and his gift for pungent observation.

Highly entertaining and thoroughly rewarding, George Orwell: A Reader’s Approach provides - sixty years after the publication of Animal Farm - a wonderful reminder and fresh portrait of one of the twentieth century’s great authors.