“The term inspiration is often thought to be about positive and desirable things, and there’s a sentimental image of the muse as a pretty lady who’s the object of the writer’s ardor. For a political writer the inspirations or at least the prods to write are often whatever is most repellent and alarming, and opposition is a stimulant. Stalin was surely Orwell’s principal muse, if not as a personality then as the figure at the center of a terrifying authoritarianism wreathed in lies.”
