with Nathan Waddell. George Orwell and unfinished video games.

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter @TrueBagglerag. My guest in this episode is Nathan Waddell. Nathan is a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, where he works in the English Literature department. He’s got interests in George Orwell, in the modernist painter and writer Wyndham Lewis, and in many other aspects of early 20th century and inter-war culture. Alongside that – and mostly outside of work – Nathan is also an extremely keen pianist. (And actually he admitted that he spends more time playing the piano than he does reading). That’s a subject for a future conversation though – because in this episode we talked about a mixture of unfinished things in relation to George Orwell, the writer who’s best known for his novels “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm”. Nathan talks me through some stories that Orwell left unfinished when he died in 1950. We then go on to talk about “Half-Life”, an unfinished videogame with Orwellian themes. And, finally, Nathan tells me about his unfinished podcast, which began as a chapter-by-chapter commentary on “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Links of interest Nathan’s podcast, Reading Orwell is available here:  https://drnjwaddell.co.uk/reading-orwell The podcast I mention about the essay as a form is here: Free Thinking, Essay Writing (broadcast 10 January 2024) https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001v1v4 The LRB podcast is here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast