Orwell’s Faded Lion traces the history of Britain from the end of the Second World War, during the darkest days of which George Orwell wrote The Lion and the Unicorn, calling for a British revolution, to the present. The book confronts the actual direction taken by British society against the background of the high hopes of the generation that survived the war. The book also considers Britain alongside its European neighbours, drawing upon personal experiences of living and travelling widely in Europe, as well as experience of left-wing party politics and of the Northern Ireland situation in the 1980s.

Orwell’s Faded Lion traces the history of Britain from the end of the Second World War, during the darkest days of which George Orwell wrote The Lion and the Unicorn, calling for a British revolution, to the present. The book confronts the actual direction taken by British society against the background of the high hopes of the generation that survived the war. The book also considers Britain alongside its European neighbours, drawing upon personal experiences of living and travelling widely in Europe, as well as experience of left-wing party politics and of the Northern Ireland situation in the 1980s.