University Press in 2013. D J Taylor in The Guardian thought it was a "prime ornament of Orwell Studies". A N Wilson in The Spectator said he thought it was "the most sensible and systematic interpretation of Orwell I have ever read". Simon Heffer in The Daily Telegraph said that "If there is a better book on George Orwell I have yet to discover it". David Aaronovitch in the New Statesman called Colls "a lovely writer, fearless in a way that academics too often are not". David Evans in The Independent remarked that "Colls writes like an offbeat mixture of Isaiah Berlin and Clive James" which Colls was happy to take as a compliment. This Sporting Life: Sport and Liberty in England 1760-1960 was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. It won the Aberdare Prize as, in the words of the judges, "a compelling, evocative and unique explication of what sport has meant to the English". It was one of Dominic Sandbrook’s Best History Books of the Year in The Sunday Times and Melvyn Bragg’s Book of the Year in the New Statesman. Alex Massie in The Spectator thought it was "much more than a history of sport; it is really an alternative history of England". In the same year, he wrote the introduction to the new Penguin edition of Animal Farm. TV Radio and Journalism He writes regularly for The New Statesman and The Literary Review. “He has written and broadcast for television and radio, including The South Bank Show (on Lee Hall), Who Do You Think You Are? (on Alan Carr), Analysis (on the English Gentleman), The Verb (on intellectuals), In Our Time (on Animal Farm), From Our Own Correspondent (on France and the USA), Ramblings (with Clare Balding in the steps of the Jarrow Marchers), The Matter of the North (with Melvyn Bragg), Start the Week (on Orwell), Newsnight (on Brexit), A House Through Time (with David Olusuga), British Council (Durham Miners’ Gala), GNR Films (Great North Run), Unherd (on Levelling Up),The Rest is History (on Orwell), and Radio Free Europe (on Orwell).” He has brought to this side of his work an appreciation of popular culture influenced both by his understanding of its critical importance and also by his sheer enjoyment of it (notably pop music, film, Leicester City and Newcastle United). He has also contributed to German, French, Spanish, US and Italian TV, newspapers