George Orwell - a literary mediocrity

 BBC - 28 Augsust

Point of View: Why Orwell was a literary mediocrity

George Orwell was a literary mediocrity and his views on the importance of plain writing are plain wrong, argues writer Will Self.

"The English," GK Chesterton wrote, "love a talented mediocrity." Which is not to suggest that we don't also have a reverence for the charismatic and gifted, or that we're incapable of adoring those with nothing to recommend them.
Still, overall, it's those individuals who unite great expertise and very little originality - let alone personality - who arouse in us the most perfect devotion. The permatanned actor whose chat show anecdotes are so dull the studio audience falls asleep; the colourless athlete who's had a highly successful charisma bypass; the nondescript prime minister whose fractious cabinet is subdued by the sheer monotony of his speaking voice. I could go on.

• A Point of View is usually broadcast on Fridays on BBC Radio 4 at 20:50 BST and repeated Sundays, 08:50 BST
• Will Self is a novelist and journalist

At least residually, the Celtic cultures valorise the excessive and the extreme - the rocky eminence of a warrior-bard whose dark countenance is lit up by brilliant fulguration.

Or so they claim. In truth the grey hold sway in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast and Dublin quite as much as they do in London. Is it any surprise? Whatever their own talents, the Scots, Welsh and Irish have all been colonised by English mediocrities.

Over the centuries during which they've held sway these administrators of ennui have built up a sort of pantheon of piffle, comprised of talented mediocrities' productions. There are entire syllabuses full of their lacklustre texts - galleries hung with their bland daubs, concert halls resounding with their duff notes, and of course, radio stations broadcasting their tepid lucubrations.
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And the story at The Guardian