George and Evelyn

"What they had most in common was a hatred of moral relativism," Mr. Lebedoff writes of his subjects. "They both believed that morality is absolute, though they defined and applied it differently. But each believed with all his heart, brain, and soul that there were such things as moral right and moral wrong, and that these were not subject to changes in fashion. Moral relativism was, in fact, the gravest of sins. Everything else they believed in common flowed from this basic perception. . . . They fought the dictators, of course, but both knew that the larger battles were yet to come, and that victory over the advance scouting parties of soulless uniformity was only a first step. . . . What both believed -- their core, who they were -- was that individual freedom mattered more than anything else on earth and reliance on tradition was the best way to maintain it."


From Michael Dirda's Wall Street Journal review of David Lebedoff's book about George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh.