Did you know that George Orwell only found national acclaim as an author in the final years of his life, as his health was worsening? Or that, with the growing prospect of death looming increasingly large, he sought refuge on a remote Scottish island? Historian Robert Colls tells James Osborne about these last stages of Orwell's life, and the toll that writing his two most celebrated works – Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four – took on the author.

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GO BEYOND THE PODCAST

To find out more about George Orwell, listen to our Life of the Week episode profiling the author, with historian Laura Beers: https://bit.ly/4d6ka7D

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