Friday 11 March 2011
Inside the Whale, a collection of essays by Orwell, was first published on this day in 1940. The selection consisted of some of Orwell’s most famous essays: ‘Charles Dickens‘, ‘Boys’ Weeklies’ and ‘Inside the Whale’. We’re delighted that you can now read ‘Inside the Whale’ on our website, in addition to ‘Charles Dickens’ (‘Boys’ Weeklies’ will be following soon). For more on ‘Inside the Whale’, you can also watch Charles Holdefer’s talk from last year’s Orwell Conference in Lille which takes a line from the essay as its title, ‘As surely as doomed as the hippopotamus’; or read Salman Rushdie’s take over at Granta, ‘Outside the Whale’. Also published today, in 1935, was Orwell’s novel A Clergyman’s Daughter. You can find the first chapter on our website, along with the essay ‘Hop-picking’, an activity which features in the book.
The Orwell Prize 2011
Orwell Prize at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2011
- Sunday 3rd April, 4pm: Orwell vs Kipling with Charles Allen, Paul Anderson, Sarah Bakewell
- Tuesday 5th April, 10am: Comedy and the Coalition with Martin Rowson
- Tuesday 5th April, noon: Does it make a difference who funds the arts? With Sir Mark Jones (V&A), chaired by Will Gompertz
From the archive
From elsewhere
- A new edition of Gordon Bowker’s biography of George Orwell is now available. You can read much more from Gordon on our ‘About Orwell’ page
- Peter Beaumont, winner of the Orwell Prize for Journalism 2007, writes about reporting from Libya
- Patrick Butler, editor of society, health and education policy for The Guardian, writes that public service blogging is not redundant, citing previous winner Winston Smith
- And for some light relief… ‘If ‘1984’ or ‘The Trial’ had been a children’s book, Mr Messy would be it. No literary character has ever been so fully and categorically obliterated by the forces of social control. Hargreaves may well pay homage to Kafka and Orwell in this work, but he also goes beyond them’