"It all made such shockingly perfect sense." Animal Farm at 80
Friends of the Foundation recall their first encounters with George Orwell's miniature masterpiece
Dear Friends,
Animal Farm, George Orwell’s masterful allegory of the Russian Revolution, was first published on 17 August 1945 and marks its eightieth anniversary this Sunday. To celebrate, we asked some special guests if they could remember their first encounters with the book. We start with Richard Blair, our founding patron, who recalls the gift which began his own journey reading his father’s works.
Elsewhere in this August newsletter we have news of two exciting opportunities to join the Foundation as a trustee, as well as an opportunity for early career journalists from our friends at the John Schofield Trust and our regular highlight from our founding sponsors The Political Quarterly. First, though, it’s back to the farm.
Read on!
The Orwell Foundation team
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Earlier this summer, we asked friends of the Foundation to reflect on their first encounters with Orwell’s miniature masterpiece…
Richard Blair: “Needless to say, I still have it.”
It would have been about the age of eleven or twelve that I felt compelled to read Animal Farm. I think the reason was that I had received a special leather-bound version that had been specially produced for me. Needless to say, I still have it. How did I find it? At the time I enjoyed it very much just as a book about farm animals rising up against authority. Did I get the underlying message? I sort of understood what was going on in the narrative. I certainly found it very easy to read and probably couldn't put it down.
I read a lot as a child, nothing deep you understand, but books of the time. I was going on to read Nineteen Eighty-Four, but wiser council suggested I should wait a year or two, so it wasn't until I went up to the senior school before reading a copy, probably by the age of thirteen or fourteen—which I found more difficult to understand.
Richard Blair is George Orwell’s adopted son and a founding trustee of The Orwell Foundation and The Orwell Youth Prize.
Donal Ryan: “It all made shockingly perfect sense”
I first read Animal Farm as part of our curriculum in secondary school. I couldn’t let on to be so moved in front of my classmates, but Boxer’s departure in the glue factory van and the stark, terrible sentence, ‘Boxer was never seen again’, caused in me a sadness so deep that it had an inoculating effect against future fictive traumas: every subsequent literary injustice would be measured against this one, and few evinced anything like the same feeling of desolate sorrow. The novel’s elegant allegory was explained and graphed skilfully by our teacher, Martin Slattery. It all made such shockingly perfect sense.
Orwell said in 1941 that ‘One of the easiest pastimes in the world is debunking democracy’. The debunkers still abound; Orwell’s incendiary riposte to the braying absolutists who would inscribe their commandments on the end wall of the big barn should be required reading in every place of education.
Donal Ryan was awarded the 2025 Orwell Prize for Fiction for his novel Heart, Be at Peace.
Jenny Kleeman: “Beasts of England, for me, will always be sung with Bennett’s lilting Yorkshire accent”
My first encounter with Animal Farm was on two white audio cassettes, read by Alan Bennett. I would have been seven or eight years old. I remember sitting on the carpet of my bedroom, making dolls' houses out of shoeboxes and glue, listening to it over and over and over. Beasts of England, for me, will always be sung with Bennett's lilting Yorkshire accent.
Jenny Kleeman was the winner of the 2025 Orwell Prize for Journalism.
Jeff Wasserstrom: “I now see it as having a second meaning — as a parable for colonial rule ending”
Reading Animal Farm as a teenager during the Cold War, I took for granted that the way to understand it was as a critique of the Russian Revolution, but thanks to two post-Cold War experiences I now see it as having a second meaning — as a parable for a period of colonial rule ending but a shift in the identities of those in charge of a place failing to fully liberate a populace. Reading Emma Larkin's lovely Finding George Orwell in Burma alerted me to the fact that some Burmese have long thought about the book in those terms, as a kind of sequel to Burmese Days set post-independence.
The second related experience I had was being in Hong Kong during 2014's Umbrella Movement, which was fueled in part by frustration that when the city ended its period as a British colony its top official became someone who seemed as beholden to rulers in Beijing as the pre-1997 ones had been to rulers in London. I saw a poster by student activists who were holding a book club meeting in a tent-filled occupy zone to discuss Animal Farm and I came across a banner that had the phrase some animals are more equal than others emblazoned on it.
Jeff Wasserstrom is a historian and specialist in China. His latest book is Vigil: The Struggle for Hong Kong.
Jo McMillan: “I took them out of the library, and read them quietly, in bed, under the covers.”
Not many British children are born into a communist family, but I was one of them. Books were part of the parental armoury, and Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London were on our shelves, though not Nineteen Eighty-Four – and certainly not Animal Farm.
In 1979, aged thirteen, I took them out of the library, and read them quietly, in bed, under the covers. The next summer, I was in the GDR – my mother invited by the Ministry of Education to teach at what is now the University of Potsdam.
One day, a young man took me aside and said, ‘You know, they don’t tell you the half of it...’ I had no idea what he meant. But by the end of that summer, when we’d seen the best of everything and been showered with presents and praise, I wondered if he’d meant: Yes, of course we’re all equal here. But some are more equal than others.
Jo McMillan's novel The Accidental Immigrants was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Fiction 2025.
Sameer Padania: “How do those encountering Animal Farm now experience it?”
The first time I read something that made me feel viscerally what was meant by 'politics' and why it might actually matter was reading Animal Farm aged ten. My teacher meant for me to read it as an allegory about human politics, but something in it always chafed for me, that only crystallised when I read it to my own animal-obsessed children. How do those encountering Animal Farm now experience it, amid the ruinous impacts of the Anthropocene, as we acknowledge the 'more-than-human' world, animal sentience and the personhood of rivers? Might they see Orwell's animals not just as stand-ins for human political actors, but as other minds, other forms of consciousness or even politics? What kind of allegory might that be?
Sameer Padania is an independent media consultant and trustee of the Orwell Foundation.
Sandra Newman: “I would only read books about animals”
I got Animal Farm from the local library when I was ten or eleven because it was about animals, and at the time I would only read books about animals. The association of the working class with animals may have had a permanent influence on my political sympathies.
Sandra Newman's latest novel is a ‘companion novel’ to Nineteen Eighty-Four, told from the perspective of Julia.
Kim Darroch: “I had never read anything like it”
I first read Animal Farm when I was fourteen. It was a set book in English. It dazzled me. I had never read anything like it. It introduced me to allegory. It sparked a fascination with Russia that has endured to this day. It made me start to think about politics and about power. And it was by far the wisest book I had ever read. It sent me scurrying to the bookshelves to read more Orwell: inevitably, Nineteen Eighty-Four came next.
Eighty years on from publication, Animal Farm looks more profound, and more relevant, than ever. In the rise of populism, we can see all of those deceptions that Orwell skewered so accurately: the manipulation of language, the twisting of facts, the appeals to emotion, the personality cults, the drift to authoritarianism. Orwell understood, and could articulate, how power corrupts as well as any writer in history. And he could capture it in one of the greatest closing sentences in all literature. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which."
Kim Darroch was the chair of judges for the 2025 Orwell Prize for Political Writing.
Join the Orwell Foundation as a trustee
The Orwell Foundation is looking for two new Trustees to help us write the next chapter in our mission. Having just launched an ambitious five-year strategic plan, we are looking for two exceptional individuals to join us at this pivotal moment:
🔹 Trustee Treasurer: help steer the financial future of a growing charity
🔹 Publishing Lead: help us find and celebrate the best new writing
This isn’t just governance: it is your chance ensure that Orwell's legacy continues to inspire the thinkers and writers of tomorrow. Find out more and apply on our website by the deadline of Monday 8th September.
"This is the story of how George Orwell wrote Animal Farm, the mountain he had to climb to get it published, and the enormous personal tragedy which ran beneath."
In this original short film, DJ Taylor and Richard Blair unpack the extraordinary story behind the story, from the book’s rejection by several publishers to the adoption of George and Eileen’s son, Richard, and Eileen’s unexpected death soon after.
“Elevating stories of labour, place and local pride can help embed white working-class experiences into a multicultural nationalism that recognises difference while fostering a common good.”
Head to the Political Quarterly blog to read a new article by Sam Taylor Hill, John Denham and Tariq Modood on what the concept of ‘multicultural nationalism’ can offer debates about the British Labour Party and the white working class.
PQ is the leading academic journal for analysis, insight and informed opinion on politics and public policy in the UK and globally. In addition to their essential journal, blog and events programme, PQ are the founding sponsors of The Orwell Prizes. You can also find them right here on Substack.
John Schofield Trust mentorships now open
Calling all early career journalists! Applications are now open for the John Schofield Trust’s flagship mentorship scheme. Successful candidates will be paired with an experienced mentor from another media organisation, offering industry access and personal guidance when it can be of most help. Find out more on the John Schofield Trust website and apply by 12th September. UK and Ireland only.
Emails from Orwell
"Orwell Daily is a lovely use of Substack, finding the best pieces from his archive and making them available online” - The Bluestocking
Orwell Daily is the new way to read one of the world’s greatest writers. We dig out highlights and hidden gems from George Orwell's journalism, letters and diaries and deliver them to your inbox “on the day” they were first published.
Donal Ryan’s reference to “Boxer and the glue factory” reminded me of the movie “Soylent Green” and Edward G. Robinson’s fated character.
Thank you for preserving Orwell’s insights!
I read it during the COVID lockdowns. Watching Boris Johnson and company drink champagne at parties in Downing Street while the rest of us suffered in isolation made me gag.
There was no allegory there: it was a transcript.