with Nathan Waddell. George Orwell and unfinished video games.

First broadcast 4 March 2024

Nathan Waddell is a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, where he works in the English Literature department. He’s got interests in George Orwell, in the modernist painter and writer Wyndham Lewis, and in many other aspects of early 20th century and inter-war culture.

In this episode we talked about a mixture of unfinished things in relation to George Orwell, the writer who’s best known for his novels Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. Nathan talks me through some stories that Orwell left unfinished when he died in 1950. We then go on to talk about Half-Life, an unfinished videogame with Orwellian themes. Finally, Nathan tells me about his unfinished podcast, which began as a chapter-by-chapter commentary on Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Links of interest:

Nathan’s podcast, Reading Orwell is available here:  https://drnjwaddell.co.uk/reading-orwell

The podcast I mention about the essay as a form is here: Free Thinking, Essay Writing (broadcast 10 January 2024) https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001v1v4

The LRB podcast is here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast