Authors:
  • The writers I care about most and never grow tired of are: Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens, Charles Reade, Flaubert and, among modern writers, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills.

    George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: A patriot after all, 1940-1941”