Eton (Shutterstock)
The basic facts about George Orwell’s years at Eton are well known. But we don’t precisely know which Etonian values he retained and what influence the school had on his later life. John le Carré wrote me (on September 27, 1998), “I taught at Eton. It always amused me that Blair-Orwell, who had been to Eton, always took great pains to disown the place.”
Responding to
Twentieth Century Authors, Orwell categorically declared: “I was educated at Eton, 1917-1921, as I had been lucky enough to win a scholarship, but I did no work there and learned very little, and I don’t feel that Eton has been much of a formative influence on my life.”
Godfrey Hodgson obituary John Shirley
The journalist and historian Godfrey Hodgson, who has died aged 86, was among the most perceptive and industrious observers of his generation, particularly in the field of American society and politics.
His reputation was founded on his landmark study, America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon (1976), acknowledged by the Cambridge historian Gary Gerstle as “one of the great works of political and social history written in the past half century”. At 600 pages long and in continuous print since its first publication, it was but one item in a prolific output that ran to more than 15 books, extensive university teaching and a lifetime of newspaper and television reporting (as well as numerous Guardian obituaries). As a journalist, Hodgson reckoned he had worked in 48 of the 50 US states.
John Heilpern obituary Michael Coveney
John Heilpern, who has died aged 78 of lung cancer, was a feature writer on the Observer for 10 years before moving to New York in the late 1970s. But it is for two of the most brilliant and important theatre books of our time that he will be remembered: Conference of the Birds: The Story of Peter Brook in Africa (1977) and John Osborne: A Patriot for Us (2006).
In the first, he travelled with Brook’s international company, based in Paris, on a voyage of self-discovery and investigation into the roots of theatre across the Sahara, improvising and interacting with villagers and tribal people they met in six countries (Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Mali), culminating in an experimental version of the great Persian allegorical poem devised by Ted Hughes.
Ved Mehta, whose monumental autobiography explored life in India, dies at 86 Harrison Smith Ved Mehta, an author and journalist who helped introduce Americans to Indian history and culture, most notably in an epic 12-volume autobiography that melded the personal and political, recalling his childhood vision loss and the traumas of Indian partition, died Jan. 9 at his home in Manhattan. He was 86. The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, said his wife, Linn Cary Mehta. Mr. Mehta wrote for the New Yorker magazine for more than three decades, reporting on Oxford philosophers, Christian theologians, Noam Chomsky’s polarizing linguistic theories and the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, whose disciples he spent years interviewing in the 1970s, long after the Indian independence leader was assassinated.
‘Wise, clever and kind, Katharine Whitehorn made it easier for all of us who followed her’ Vanessa Thorpe
Stylish, stimulating and life-affirming, Katharine Whitehorn, the
Observer writer and broadcaster who helped shape modern British journalism, was mourned by readers and former colleagues at the weekend.
Born in Hendon, London, in 1928, the columnist, the first woman to be given such a job at this newspaper, had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. She moved to a care home in north London in 2018 and was recently diagnosed with Covid-19, although it is not clear if this contributed to her death on Friday at the age of 92.