A Bright Cold Day: The Wonder of George Orwell - Softcover

Waddell, Nathan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0861549783 ISBN 13: 9780861549788

Publisher: Oneworld Publications, 2026

Synopsis

A pioneering biography of George Orwell told through moments of everyday life

'A fascinating, oblique take... Revelatory and very insightful.' William Boyd, author of The Predicament

When we think about Orwell, we imagine an angular, moustachioed sceptic crouched over a typewriter, who – between puffs on his cigarette – composes effortless streams of prose, unadorned but explosive. We see a man with ‘Important Things to Say’ about: the slow creep of authoritarianism; the consequences of all-seeing tech; the fragility of truth.

Much less often do we see him as a person caught up in the business of everyday life. And yet Orwell’s work thrums with the quotidian: the smell of boiled cabbage, the chill of an unheated flat in early spring, the rumbling of old pipes.

A Bright Cold Day reveals how the principles that govern us begin in the mundane. From waking and showering to breakfast, work, lunch, the pub, sleep and dreaming, Orwell was never dulled to the routines of living. And in the details of the day, we can understand how power, money, freedom and choice play out, not just for Orwell’s literary characters, but for us all.

***

'Summons one of the biggest questions we face nowadays, the relationship between fiction and reality.' Andrew O'Hagan, author of Caledonian Road

'A clever, offbeat history of mid-century Britain through George Orwell’s eyes.' Helen Lewis

'An astute and intimate portrait of George Orwell.' Dorian Lynskey, author of The Ministry of Truth

'Beautifully written... urgent and compelling.' Emma Smith, author of Portable Magic

About this title

About the Author

Nathan Waddell is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham. His most recent book, Moonlighting (Oxford University Press, 2019), assesses Beethoven’s impact on Anglo-American modernist writing. Nathan is currently finishing a book on Wyndham Lewis and fascism, for Princeton University Press, and working on several projects to do with Orwell, his literary hero – these include The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell and George Orwell in Context, for Cambridge University Press. Recent publications in this area include The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and the Oxford World’s Classics edition (2021) of Orwell’s underappreciated novel A Clergyman’s Daughter. Nathan sits on the Editorial Board of the academic journal George Orwell Studies and since 2020 has run a student-aimed podcast called Reading Orwell. A Bright Cold Day is his first trade book.

From the Back Cover

A pioneering biography of George Orwell told through moments of everyday life.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0861549783
• ISBN 13: 9780861549788
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304