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The freshest parts of the book are the glimpses of the private man. Orwell suppressed his real name, Eric Blair, and depicted his early years as dismal; but a childhood friend, one Jacintha Buddicom, remembers him as a funny, spirited lad. She thinks Orwell effaced his real name and childhood simply be cause they were ordinary and happy. It seems likely, however, that the young writer was simply forging a new artistic identity for himself and discarding the privileged-class identification. Later on he liked to affect a Cockney accent and slurp his tea from the saucer, having first blown upon it vigorously.
Malcolm Muggeridge writes touchingly about Orwell's last days. He was only 46 when he died, and he had been married three months to a beautiful young woman named Sonia. The wedding took place in the hospital, and Novelist Anthony Powell gave him a mauve smoking jacket for the occasion, which he continued to wear. The man whose pessimistic view of the future is embodied in Nineteen Eighty-Four was personally joyful, doubtless because of his new wife, and full of plans, including one for a kitchen with all-black rubber fixtures. If he were alive today, he would only be 68. One wonders hungrily what he would be saying now, just twelve years before 1984.
· Martha Duffy