The Lion and the Unicorn"As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me." "Literature, especially poetry, and lyric poetry most of all, is a kind of family joke, with little or no value outside its own language group." George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius was published in February 1941, well into the Second World War, after Dunkirk and the Battle