內容簡介

2017年紐約時報最受注目的書之一

「這本書的讀者將會了解，保存以及說出事實需要很長的時間。」─洛杉磯時報

「關於兩位曾經為維護民主自由設下標準的勇士的精采故事。」─柯克斯評論

一九三零年代，喬治‧歐威爾是個剛起步的作家，邱吉爾是個被懷疑對黨派不忠的政治家，兩人都在戰爭中差點喪失性命，但當時的兩人若是意外身亡，不太會被視為大事，因為當時，所有人都不知道這兩個人會成為英國歷史上最重要的人之一。

在當時，民主自由沒有多少人重視，兩人在奮鬥的過程中嘗盡了苦難、辛酸和孤單，但他們沒有放棄，最後證明了自己就是當時英國最需要的人，努力的結果讓民主自由在英國發芽茁壯。

本書為歐威爾和邱吉爾的雙重傳記，介紹了兩人當時的鞠躬盡瘁，對於研究歷史有興趣的讀者，可以一次瞭解兩人的背景，以及當時的經歷。

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017

A dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, who preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike.

Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's—Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and in deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. In a crucial moment, they responded first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then they acted on their beliefs. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's compass set toward freedom as its due north.

It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930's, democracy was discredited in many circles, and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini "men we could do business with," if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign, but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom—that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted.

In the end, Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of the 1940's to triumph over freedom's enemies. And though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course, and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks's masterful hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin.

Churchill and Orwell is a perfect gift for the holidays!