From the moment we open the pages of George Orwell: A Readers 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...