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D. J. Taylor is a writer and critic. His collection of short stories, After Bathing at Baxter's was published in 1997 and he is the author of six novels: Great Eastern Land (1986); Real Life (1992); English Settlement (1996); Trespass (1998), a satire of 1970s England; The Comedy Man (2001), the story of one half of a comedy duo; and Kept: A Victorian Mystery (2006). Several of his books are set in his home city of Norwich. His books of non-fiction include Afer the War: The Novel and England Since 1945 (1993); A Vain Conceit: British fiction in the 1980s (1989), a critical look at the quality of fiction-writing in Britain; and most recently, Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940. He is also well-known for his biographies: Thackeray (1999); and Orwell: The Life, published in 2003 to coincide with the centenary of Orwell's birth. This book won the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award.
If you want to know how [Orwell] became a great writer, and a tormented figure, and a national treasure, David Taylor's New Life is the doubleplusgood place to start * New Statesman * An astonishing verdict on George Orwell's virtues - and his vices . . . [The book] adds fresh material to give a fuller portrait of the real Eric Blair . . . it is hard to imagine him portrayed more sensitively or judiciously than he is here * Telegraph * Incisive * The Times * Mr. Taylor's Orwell: The New Life is a new text that completes the picture by fleshing out Orwell's emotional life with recently discovered letters and interviews with the last living people to have known him. Expertly told and subtle in judgment, The New Life will not be the last word in the ever-growing field of Orwelliana, but it will become its central monument * Wall Street Journal * Fluent, careful, nuanced and revealing . . . Taylor is excellent on how Orwell's childhood nourished and shaped his life . . . Taylor presents Orwell's deficiencies unstintingly while at the same time managing not to toxify the subject . . . illuminating, fair-minded work * Irish Independent *
