I was instantly enamoured with this gorgeous, compassionate story of one man's travels in the footsteps of George Orwell. I felt such a deep connection with Lewis's words as they reflected my own passion for Orwell's writing in my 20s. Lewis writes prosaically about the influences and experiences that shaped Orwell into the thinker and writer he became. He painstakingly follows Orwell around the world to all the locations he had a connection with. Lewis demonstrates great skill at depicting the different landscapes and climates, echoing Orwell's love and respect for the natural world.

My grateful thanks to #Netgalley and #Iconbooks for allowing me to read this ARC.

I like biographies that try to be a bit different. That aren’t just a chronological recounting of events in someone’s life from birth through death. Oliver Lewis has written one of those biographies. Yes it is life of George Orwell but instead of birth through death, we have the author (and sometimes his dog George) visiting the places that Orwell visited. And of course Orwell visited a lot of places. We go from Eton through Catalonia and Marrakesh to Oxfordshire via Wigan.

Along the route, we learn why a young man educated at Eton became such a champion of the underdog and we learn of his need to make his own choices - like becoming a policeman in India rather than joining the Civil Service.

Mr Lewis is an engaging writer and the places and events and people come alive to help paint a three dimensional picture of the journey from Eric Blair to George Orwell. Recommended if you’re a fan of Orwell but even if you’re not, this is an interesting and entertaining read.

I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley

I really enjoyed this book. Normally I only read fiction but thought I'd like to read and review yhis as I have always been a fan of George Orwell. I found out so much that I didn't know about him. The book is part travelogue and part biography but we also get insights into the thoughrs of author Oliver Lewis. I found this an enjoyable read which was both fascinating and interesting. Many thanks Netgalley for the chance to read and review this book.

I love the idea of this book. As a fan of Orwell’s work, it’s interesting to gain insight into what may have proved inspirational for a writer and often it’s places. The story starts with a visit to India and it’s certainly very detailed as Lewis makes a long journey to inaccessible places. However, it felt more like a blog for a diary than anything directly relevant to Orwell. I’m not convinced that the visit was in any way relevant to Orwell’s work and if it was, then I’ve missed it.

The list of places is extensive but maybe my expectations are unrealistic. I felt the book was going to give greater insight into how the places influenced his writing. As with the trip to India, it reads more like a journal record of a travel itinerary. Apart from the links by place, I’ve learned little else and found some of the passages overwritten and banal. What coy,d have been fascinating became tedious and I’m sorry to say I didn’t really enjoy this book at all.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley. .

Loosely written in a colloquial British style, this is a travelogue of Lewis’s visits to places associated with Blair/Orwell:
• Birthplace of Motihari in North-East India
• Boyhood in Shiplake and Henley-upon-Thames
• Youth at Eton, where he was taught by M R James and Aldous Huxley (perhaps)
• Myanmar/ Burma, where he worked as a colonial policeman, from which experience he wrote Burmese Days. This chapter is most interesting because the locations are so different
• Southwold, where his parents retired and provided the background for A Clergyman’s Daughter
• Paris, featured in Down and Out in Paris and London
• Hayes, Middlesex, where Orwell worked as a small private school teacher
• Hampstead, London, working in a bookshop
• Wigan, although Orwell visited other industrial towns on his journey to Wigan’ “Pier”
• Catalonia, where Orwell fought and was wounded in the Spanish Civil War
• Marrakesh, where Orwell tried to mitigate the effects of tuberculosis
• Fitzrovia, where Orwell lived during the Second World War
• Jura, Scotland, where he hoped to again mitigate the effects of his tuberculosis
• Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, where he was buried (but otherwise had no connection)

The idea of visiting the places where Orwell had lived was novel and interestingly documented. However, I was rather dissatisfied with Lewis’s style, with mentions of his dog being unilluminating and his views sometimes appearing contradictory, such as when he says that Eton (and similar schools) surpassed possibly any other type of education in the world for a child of that age, but later states that at each level the academic expectations of the pupil became less and less, reflecting Orwell’s increasing dissatisfaction with the nature of education provided for him.
I am glad to have read this book, having read much of Orwell’s writings (other than the lesser known novels), and remembering little of an old biography that I read (The Crystal Spirit by George Woodcock), I found the biographical information interesting. I also enjoyed the travel writing, which strives with varying success to be evocative and interesting.
However, I found the book too uneven and unsure of its purpose, too conversational and meandering. There are lots of interesting facts and some good writing, but it didn’t come together for me to be anything more than a collection of stories and anecdotes.

I received a Netgalley copy of this book, but this review is my honest opinion.

Like Oliver Lewis, I’m a great admirer of Orwell’s writing, so I thought a book tracing all the places where he lived would be interesting. Unfortunately, when it comes to describing places and what happens to him in them, he’s no Eric Newby. Orwell was a year old when he left India, his birthplace, so it hardly seemed worth the journey to visit the original Orwell home, except as background to his parents’ Indian life. I certainly didn’t need little lectures on the iniquities of the Raj, or to be told that Gandhi was a man who will never be forgotten. Could someone really write such nonsense? Yes.

After leaving Eton, Orwell became an officer in the Indian military police and was posted to Burma. Lewis faithfully follows him but what was the point of suffering the discomforts of travel in Myanmar in order to find out nothing at all about Orwell’s life there? And in what way is <I>Burmese Days</I> ‘full of anachronisms’? I don’t think he’s using the word correctly. The journeys around Britain were difficult, since so many of the places Orwell lived have disappeared. The most interesting part of the book for me was the visit to Spain. I had no idea how highly Orwell is thought of there: Orwell Streets, Orwell Squares, Orwell exhibitions.

Lewis seems to resent Orwell’s ‘privileged’ background and says that he could be snobbish, which is true. He is not free from petty snobbery himself, when he complains about ‘garish’ annuals and garden gnomes. The book falls into the biographer’s trap of ‘I’m sure’ and ‘I’m certain that’, not backed up by evidence. Orwell is strangely missing from this account, which it seems to me is far more about the author. I did not like this book.

A great way to learn about a literary icon

I knew some of the material and facts but not all and even so with this fresh spin it was a pleasure to revisit the man and his stories, not to mention his travels. What a life!

I've long been a fan of the writing of George Orwell, so I picked this up on a whim as I was interested in the premise - basically, the author follows in Orwell's footsteps around the world, visiting the places where he lived and worked in what was, unfortunately, a life cut short by serious illness.

This was one of those books that attempts a little to be all things to all people, both covering a lot of detail about Orwell's life and writings for those who were new to him and also introducing new information from the author's own research. I'm not completely convinced that it manages both of those jobs equally well and at times it felt as though I came away knowing more about the author himself than I did Orwell. There were definitely a few places where I was left feeling distinctly uncomfortable by the way places and people were described, at times in quite a condescending fashion.

This was also one of those books where the formatting made it harder to appreciate the overall layout. There were a number of maps, since Orwell travelled a lot, but they were unreadable in the downloaded version. Hopefully they'll be better done in a complete version of this book.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, via Netgalley. This is my honest review of the book in question.

This is an enjoyable trip through the environs that were once home to the writer, George Orwell. There is evidence of some sound research behind the making of this book and it throws up some information that was new to me, notably his early relationships with contemporaries whilst living around Henley on Thames.
I assume that the care taken to describe areas and some ‘quirks’ of British society means that this book is aimed to include readers from outside of the U K itself, therefore I found the style of writing and flow clunky at times but the narrative is generally engaging.
Overall I think this might prove engaging to a reader on several levels and as an introduction to the author or as a book filling in details for a casual reader it achieves its purpose.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this title.

Part travelogue, part biography, this book (Pub Date 6 Apr 2023) flits seemlessly through timelines and cultures in a profound, insightful manner, almost Dalrymplesque in its style in places, albeit minus the architectural sensibilities; it is a rainbow patchwork held together convincingly by the towering, restless mind that is George Orwell.

And I very much appreciate the hard work that has gone into producing this book, clearly a work of patience driven by fascination.

Like many, I was already familiar with Orwell's two most famous works from school. I was not well acquainted with his biography, nor that of his native restlessness and originality, as diverse as his many dwelling places during his life.

What emerges from these pages is an enjoyable exploration, a voyage, if you will, around this literary giant. To many Orwell remains an enigma, following the opposite course of a lot of people during their lives. For example, I began with strong leftward leanings which have morphed slowly to the centre in later life; the course of Orwell's life was somewhat opposite to that, as the author explains well, perhaps understandable considering his upper middle class origins during the latter years of the Indian Raj.

Orwell's experiences in Spain during 1936-7, do indeed seem seminal too, correcting his own left leaning path, to the point that by the end of his life he seemed to be once again embracing a patriotism which, to be fair, he never abandoned at all. Maybe this is why he is often acclaimed and disliked by both right and left.

The author's descriptive passages relating to India, Eton, Spain, London and Wigan in particular, are to me most enjoyable and profound, stating that England's long term problem with itself is still as much about social hierarchy as it is poverty. And that pigeon racing in Lancashire is still popular today, hanging like those slowly decaying symbols of a once powerful cotton industry.

What does come across well is Orwell's refutation of pigeon holes. I think he understood the futility of hanging tags around people; why shouldn't socialists be patriotic? And why shouldn't conservatives embrace redistribution of wealth? England? Whose England? indeed.

As Malcolm Muggeridge was to point out at Orwell's death, to many he was an enigma, both an arch conservative in relation to England and its customs and traditions, as well as someone willing to embrace a revolution in thought, even if he was to see the error in the latter, particularly during the emergence of the Cold War.

I would point out one other error though from the text - Henry VI of England was not the first Yorkist king of England; that particular honour falls to Edward IV, brother of the future Richard III.

That said, this was a most enjoyable and enlightening read and one which I would wholeheartedly recommend to any open minded and curious person wishing to know more about one of the most important authors of the 20th century.

Copyright Francis 2022

The Orwell Tour is exactly what you would imagine it to be. Oliver Lewis travels through the places where Orwell lived and worked linking them back to his writing, considering the changes that have taken place and reflecting on the footprint Orwell left, or in many cases disappointingly didn’t. It covers his birthplace in India, his various homes in the United Kingdom, his work in the police in Myanmar (Burma), his involvement in the Spanish Civil War and so on through his all too short, but wildly productive, life.

I’m a great believer in the benefits of travel, but also that a sustainable planet cannot sustain the hyper-mobility of people that has become the accepted nature of our shrinking world, so I believe travel must have a purpose and travel writing has a key role to play in our society. Good travel writing, indeed journalism as a whole, should allow us to engage with the world outside of our own location and experience. Orwell was a master of this with his objective reporting and creative characterisation and The Orwell Tour achieves it perhaps most powerfully by re-directing the reader to Orwell’s work.

As I followed the author’s journey through Orwell’s life, I found myself drawn back to the novels and journalism that I have long enjoyed but with a new perspective, knowing that bit more about where the words came from. I feel that I know Orwell better and that I have fresh eyes to re-visit him. I also realised that I hadn’t spent nearly enough time with his essays, having focused previously on the novels and the major well-known books of reportage. Even before saying farewell to the Tour, I was enjoying Orwell’s reflections on working in a bookshop, on the talent of Charles Dickens, some of the more exotic aspects of his life abroad and, appropriately, his confessions on being a book reviewer.

Orwell was a fascinating character and the tension in his thinking between the conservatism that was shaped in his youth and perhaps strengthened in his middle (or for him final) age and the revolutionary sympathies that he is generally recognised for, makes for an engaging and thought-provoking theme in his life and writing. He was a complex man, much more so than he is sometimes portrayed by those who would focus on only one element of his thought.

I would recommend The Orwell Tour to anyone, whether you have read Orwell and want some new insight to take back to your reading, or only know him from his deep absorption into our culture (which is surely inescapable), as this book is a signpost and will guide you to one of the greatest writers this country has ever produced, whom everyone should read.