George Orwell was a very problematic man, but he was also a complete genius

George Orwell stood up for democratic socialism and against totalitarianism. He praised lucid writing and condemned euphemistic language. Many of the phrases with which we analyse politics and culture today — from the concept of Newspeak to the idea of Big Brother — come from Orwell. He is like a guiding saint, an avatar of moral and intellectual clarity. But the writer Anna Funder, in her new book Wifedom, argues that Orwell possessed a complicating streak of bigotry.