George Orwell

First published in 1974 under the title The Last Man in Europe, Alan Sandison's book took an unusual view of Orwell as a writer of paradox wherein the Protestant urge to question struggles with a longing to assent. The argument of the book was described in the Economist as 'brilliantly sustained and magisterially cumulative'. Ten years after first publication this new edition of the book, which significantly extends the argument, is still a challenge to conventional thinking about Orwell, showing him to be remarkably dependent upon the Protestant/Puritan tradition which he is no longer able to accept.