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Aug 2023
54m 46s

History of Ideas: George Orwell

David Runciman
About this episode
This week David discusses George Orwell’s ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ (1941), his great wartime essay about what it does – and doesn’t – mean to be English. How did the English manage to resist fascism? How are the English going to defeat fascism? These were two different questions with two very different answers: hypocrisy and socialism. David takes the stor ... Show More
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