George Orwell died in 1950. He was 46.

The very last thing he wrote for publication was about Winston Churchill, a review of his war memoir, "Their Finest Hour".

Though you'd expect him to be repelled by Churchill's warrior heroics, he bestows on the book the greatest compliment he could think of, that it read like the work of a human being, not a public figure.

And it was a verdict shared by the thousands who lined the streets of London when Churchill finally died in 1965.

But when it counted, neither Churchill nor Orwell did the predictable thing, toed the party line.

More important was their common belief that if Britain was to have a distinctive future in the age of super-states, it had better keep faith with the best traditions in its long history, the history that tied together social justice with bloody-minded liberty.

But history ought never to be confused with nostalgia. It's written, not to revere the dead, but to inspire the living.

It's our cultural bloodstream, the secret of who we are, telling us to let go of the past even as we honor it, to lament what ought to be lamented, to celebrate what should be celebrated.

And if in the end that history turns out to reveal itself as a patriot, then I think that neither Churchill nor Orwell would have minded that very much, and, as a matter of fact, neither do I.