A Persuasive Polemic in Praise of Two Great Writers
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This is a wonderful, insightful, passionate and truly superbly written book. Its central thesis is that George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh were driven by the same moral sensibility about the march of the modern age - the first, driven by socialism, the second, by Catholicism, but both impassioned in the search for and defence of truth against moral relativism.
In Lebedoff's argument we find that Orwell and Waugh were not only appalled by the march of and appeasement of totalitarianism, but the incipient authoritarianism and march of 'the new class' in post-war democracies such as the US and UK.
What makes this story come to life is following Orwell's and Waugh's very different parallel lives. Both born in 1903, they grew to admire the moral sentiment in each other writings, corresponded with each other in the later years of Orwell's life and met towards the end of his life.
A wonderful tale of two writers, a lost age and England, and the power of writing and ideas and standing up for your beliefs. Lebodoff is to be congratulated on a truly entertaining, stimulating and thought-provoking book - which in the day of the deconstructionist door-stopping biography i short, well-written, witty and to the point.
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