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Podcast: Standard Issue Podcast
Episode: SIM Ep 888 Chops 270: Wifedom
Description: Anna Funder’s Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life is, ostensibly, a biography of Eileen Blair, nee Eileen O’Shaughnessy, aka the first Mrs George Orwell. And indeed, Anna tells Eileen’s story beautifully, using Eileen’s own words from letters to friends and to her husband, with added judicious fiction, as she imagines scenes from the Orwells’ lives, and from Eileen’s life. Turns out, Eileen played a vital role in Orwell’s writing and in his life (in actually saving his life – and indeed in keeping alive many others during the Spanish Civil War) and yet she’s mostly abs...