In the winter of 1945-6, George Orwell was recently widowed, in poor health and living in bombed-out London under the deprivations of rationing – yet in this unpromising context, he wrote a series of essays celebrating the small joys of everyday life. This new anthology, edited by Rebecca Solnit, challenges the dominant image of Orwell as the austere author of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. He instead emerges as an enthusiast of English cooking; a lover of gardening and the countryside; a leisurely pub drinker; an observer of the elm tree and blackbird’s song; a devotee of murder mystery novels and ‘good bad books’.

These essays were not escapist for Orwell; rather, they deepened his political commitments. Attending to the world through the senses, trusting your own judgement and valuing ordinary joys are ways of preserving individuality and humanity in the face of propaganda, totalitarianism and despair. These small pleasures, far from trivial, became for Orwell fortifications of the self.