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Since his untimely death in January 1950, aged 46, George Orwell has been turned into a secular saint, with his Cold War-era novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four making Orwell - a democratic socialist - a hero to anti-communists across the world, but especially in England. This week, Juliet talks to critic Fatema Ahmed and writer Owen Hatherley about how and why Orwell became so revered, whether this reverence is useful, and how his writing might be reclaimed or reassessed by the contemporary British left. SELECTED REFERENCES WORKS BY GEORGE ORWELL Animal Farm (1945) Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) Homage to Catalonia (1938) ‘The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius’ (1941) - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-lion-and-the-unicorn-socialism-and-the-english-genius/ ‘My Country Right or Left’ (1940) - https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/my-country-right-or-left/ Nineteen Eigh