Best biography of Orwell by far
Many biographies have been written about Orwell, but as someone who's written on Orwell's work, I don't think anyone has surpassed Crick. Crick writes clearly and beautiful; the book is worthy of Orwell's own standards. And unlike most of Orwell's biographers, Crick was a noted political thinker himself. While he does write about Orwell's personal life, he rightly regards it as less interesting than Orwell's life as a writer, and refuses to reduce Orwell's ideas to psychoanalysis (which would mostly be speculative anyway; Orwell was not one to reveal his deepest feelings). Without claiming that Orwell was a deep political thinker and without ignoring his flaws, Crick gives a deep and complete account of how Orwell's life as a man of letters developed and why his writing matters as much as it does.
