'He discussed a hundred subjects, ranging from the comparative amounts he spent on books and cigarettes or lamenting the decline of the English murder ... to the spawning of toads in spring. Some of these pieces were seriously conceived, others were week-to-week journalism, but all of them showed an idiosyncratic freedom in putting down things that interested him, often combined with a previously unsuspected humour.' Julian Symons

'It was the best short essay-writing of the forties. Orwell's versatility was astounding: he could always find a subject on which there was something fresh to say in a prose that, for all its ease and apparent casualness, was penetrating and direct.'

George Woodcock

'The greatest of modern iconoclasts, a new and much more humane Swift with a deadly lash for all hypocrisies, including socialist hypocrisies ... Nothing comparable with his column has been seen in recent journalistic history.'

Michael Foot

'One of the most engaging features of the column ... is the sense of dialogue, points taken up, conceded or refuted, continuity rather than a trail of pronouncements which the reader could take or leave as he or she chose.'

D. J. Taylor

[Paul Anderson's] special insights into Orwell's genius make this particular volume the very best on the subject' 'Books of the Year'

Observer

'These essays show Orwell switching easily from the sublime to the ridiculous... This is an excellent book to steam through or dip into as the inclination takes one.'

Observer

'This revelatory collection shows how the different sides of Orwell's imagination interacted... The fascination here is reading Orwell as a working journalist on a single paper.'

Independent

'[Paul Anderson has written a] masterful and highly informative introduction... This collection is remarkable... because, 60 years on, his articles are still wonderfully readable. Even when Orwell is using the column to settle one of his many scores with some foe now otherwise totally forgotten, Anderson's thorough footnotes will tell you all you need to know to appreciate Orwell's invective.'

Tribune

'Anderson's compilation usefully picks out (and edits superbly) a particular thread in Orwell's huge output. Unlike his broadcast commentaries to India, "As I Please" was not concerned with day-to-day events but with broader political thinking: half-inside, half-outside the whale.'

Times Literary Supplement

'Even if I had read the pieces before, I profited by reading them again in this attractively presented and well edited collection.'

Spectator

'A complete and invaluable collection of George Orwell's brilliantly lucid writings.'

Sunday Post