The Lion and the Unicorn

The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism And The English Genius is a 1940 polemic essay by George Orwell. It expressed his opinions on the situation in wartime Britain. The title alludes to The Lion and the Unicorn, in heraldry. The content sheds some light on the process which eventually led Orwell to the writing of his famous dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It expressed his opinion that the outdated British class system was hampering the war effort, and that in order to defeat Hitler, Britain needed a socialist revolution. Therefore, Orwell argued, being a socialist and being a patriot were no longer antithetical, they became very much complementary. As a result, in Orwell's vision at the time, "The Lion and the Unicorn" would become the emblems of the revolution which would create a new kind of Socialism, a democratic "English Socialism" in contrast to the oppressing Soviet model - and also a new form of Englishness, a Socialist one free of oppressive colonial peoples and of the decadent old ruling classes. (Orwell specified that the revolutionary regime may keep on the royal family as a national symbol, though sweeping away all the rest of the British aristocracy).