He came very close to becoming Prime Minister of Canada. Originally Premier of Ontario for the left-leaning New Democratic Party, Bob Rae now belongs to the more centrist Liberal Party. George Orwell is his favorite author. In particular, Rae speaks about Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, a book that captures the writer's disillusionment with the Communist movement during the Spanish Civil War. For a man who was aligned with the left at the time, Orwell's about-face served as a warning to Communist sympathizers that this was a political system rife with deceit, power struggles and, in today's terminology, out-and-out 'spin'. While touching on Rae's political career, this interview is more squarely focused on his insight into an author whom he terms the greatest political writer of the 20th century.