Decline of the English Murder and other Essays

A new collection of some of the less accessible essays by the author of Animal Farm, including his lament for the inferior quality of modern murders and his comments on the changing face of fictional crime; his long essay on Dickens, and his shrewd critical remarks on Kipling and on the peculiar genius of Salvadore Dali; eyewitness accounts of a hanging in Burma and a lazar-house in Paris; with notes on nationalism, on seaside postcards, and on his own ambition - surely realized? - to make political writing into an art.

Contents:

Decline of the English Murder, 1946
A Hanging, 1931
Benefit of Clergy: Some notes on Salvador Dali, 1944
How the Poor Die, 1946
Rudyard Kipling, 1942
Raffles and Miss Blandish, 1944
Charles Dickens, 1939
The Art of Donald McGill, 1941
Notes on Nationalism, 1945
Why I Write, 1946