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1. John Sutherland
Orwell’s Nose: A Pathological Biography
London: Reaktion Books, 2016
This small but brilliant volume is a joy to read, maybe the best single Orwell critique in recent years. “A Quirky and Snarky Treat” somebody at Amazon called it, and that it certainly is. “The lower classes smell,” Orwell famously offers as an upper-class folk belief, in The Road to Wigan Pier. Read more …
is probably the most important political novel of the 20th century, but the Trotskyite influence on it is underappreciated. The entire thesis about the Party’s totalitarianism is a subtle mixture of libertarian and Marxist contra Marxism ideas. One of the points which is rarely made is how the party machine doubles for fascism in Orwell’s mind—a classic Trotskyist ploy whereby Stalinism is considered to be the recrudescence of the class enemy. 
Orwell on Screen
David Ryan
George Orwell on Screen
Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 2018
This book took me down a rabbit hole when I discovered it last June. For several days I didn’t want to do anything but watch old television dramatizations and documentaries about George Orwell’s works and life. There have been a surprising number of them, and most of the key ones can be found online or in other digital media. Read more …