Gleb Struve (1898-1985), a scholar and specialist on Soviet literature, was at the School of Slavonic Studies, London University, in 1944. He wrote to Orwell and congratulated him on his piece in the Tribune column about Soviet falsification of history. They…
Tag Archive for writing
Essays
Orwell’s notes for essay on Evelyn Waugh (1949)
These notes for an essay on Evelyn Waugh were written by Orwell in his last Literary Notebook. The ellipses seen below are Orwell’s. He said: “I hope it’s dipsomania. That is simply a great misfortune that we must all help him…
Essays
Unfinished essay on Evelyn Waugh (1949)
It has not proved possible to date precisely when George Orwell prepared the first part of the typescript of his essay on Evelyn Waugh, nor to date exactly the notes he wrote in his last Literary Notebook, though all are…
Essays
Oysters and Brown Stout
Tribune, 22 December 1944 G. K. Chesterton said once that every novelist writes one book whose title seems to be a summing-up of his attitude to life. He instanced, for Dickens, Great Expectations, and for Scott, Tales of a Grandfather.…
Essays
Literature and the Left
Tribune, 4 June 1943 “When a man of true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this infallible sign, that all the dunces are in conspiracy against him.” So wrote Jonathan Swift, two hundred years before the…
Books, Reference
From Animal Farm to Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Woodcock (1912–1995) was a Canadian writer and scholar. He met Orwell during the war while Orwell was at the BBC and when Woodcock was active in the peace movement, working with British Anarchists and libertarians. They became good friends. This is the text of…
Reference
Birth of George Orwell on 25 June 1903
Excerpt from Bernard Crick’s biography George Orwell: A Life. Eric Arthur Blair was born at Motihari in Bengal on 25 June 1903, five years after his sister Marjorie, who was born at Tehta in Bihar. His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, was…
Reference
George Orwell’s rules for effective writing
Excerpt from Politics and the English Language (1946) by George Orwell. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one…
Broadcasts
Paper is Precious
This script, which survives on microfilm, is filed as anonymous in the BBC Archives. It is adjacent to Money and Guns of 20 January 1942, and its style of presentation is the same. Programmes as Broadcast (PasB) records that the transmission took…
Reviews
No, Not One
Adelphi, October 1941 Mr Murry1 said years ago that the works of the best modern writers, Joyce, Eliot and the like, simply demonstrated the impossibility of great art in a time like the present, and since then we have moved…