George Orwell 3: Murder in the Barnyard: Animal Farm

Secret Life of Books

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Animal Farm is George Orwell’s micro masterpiece, an animal fable that offers a devastating critique of Stalinist Russia and the rise of totalitarianism. Orwell described it to a friend as a “little squib,” but it’s much more than that: a tiny atom bomb that lands a structurally perfect hit on mid-20th century political authoritarianism and communism’s failure to protect the people it purported to serve.

Written over the winter 1943/1944, Animal Farm is the closest Orwell came to a piece of collaborative writing, as Orwell and Eileen revised the book together, huddled in bed to stay warm in chronically cold houses.

Animal Farm was rejected by 4 publishers (including TS Eliot at Faber & Faber) before it was snapped up by Secker and Warburg and published in 1945 and became an instant hit, hugely popular ever since.

As Sophie and Jonty tell the history of the novella, they also retrace the early years of Orwell’s marriage to Eileen O’Shaugnessey when they lived together on a smallholding farm in Wallingford Hertfordhsire, complete with a farm-shop; Orwell’s flirtation with violent revolution during the years of the Second World War; and, less dramatically, his time as a producer at the BBC.

Sophie and Jonty also sing Beasts of England in its entirety (to the tune of Darling Clementine), discuss how to make the perfect cup of tea, and Jonty’s bad experiences at a prestigious London restaurant, and why - in many ways - Animal Farm really is just about the animals.

Books referenced, quoted, or mentioned:

Orwell: The New Life (2023) by DJ Taylor

WIFEDOM (2023) by Anna Funder

Orwell’s Roses (2021) by Rebecca Solnit

Darkness at Noon (1940) by Arthur Koestler

Essays by George Orwell

Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

Leviathan (1651) by Thomas Hobbes

The Social Contract (1762) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

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