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Original Articles

‘Some writers are more equal than others’: George Orwell, the state and cold war privilege

Pages 143-170 | Published online: 08 Aug 2006
 

Notes

1. Public Record Office, London (hereafter PRO) FO1110/189/PR1135/G, Minutes by Celia Kirwan, 30 March and 6 April 1949. That Orwell kept such a list was not news in 1996 to two of his biographers. See Michael Shelden, Orwell: The Authorized Biography (London: Minerva, 1991), p.468; Bernard Crick, George Orwell (London: Penguin, 1992), p.556. The list itself was published in 1998. See Peter Davison (ed.), The Complete Works of George Orwell: vol.xx: Our Job is to Make Life Worth Living 1949–1950 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1998), pp.240–59.

2. Seamus Milne and Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Orwell Offered Blacklist., The Guardian, 11 July 1996, p.1; Ros Wynne-Jones, ‘Orwell's Little List Leaves the Left Gasping for More., The Independent on Sunday, 14 July 1996, p.10; Tom Utley, ‘Orwell is Revealed in Role of State Informer., The Daily Telegraph, 12 July 1996.

3. Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta, 1999), p.300; Davison (ed.), Our Job is to Make Life Worth Living 1949–1950, pp.324–5; Timothy Garton Ash in Peter Davison (ed.), Orwell and Politics (London: Penguin, 2001), xvii; Robert Conquest, ‘In Celia's Office: Orwell and the Cold War., Times Literary Supplement, 21 Aug. 1998, pp.4–5. For the most recent defence of Orwell's actions ‘ on the grounds that the IRD was not involved in domestic surveillance, that Orwell was not motivated by personal gain, that nobody suffered as a result, and that, anyway, some of his suspicions turned out to be right ‘ see Christopher Hitchens, Orwell's Victory (London: Penguin, 2002). For a critical response to Hitchens see Andy Croft, ‘Ministry of Truth., The Guardian, 25 May 2002, p.9 (Review section).

4. John Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of ‘St. George’ Orwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp.ix and 263ff.

5. See, for instance, George Orwell, ‘Politics and the English Language., reprinted from George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1946), in Robert Jackall (ed.), Propaganda (London: Macmillan, 1995), pp.423–37.

6. W.J. West (ed.), Orwell: The War Commentaries (London: Duckworth/BBC, 1985).

7. Crick, George Orwell, pp.455–6.

8. See also George Orwell, ‘The Prevention of Literature., in George Orwell, The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays and Reportage by George Orwell (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955), pp.367–79.

9. George Orwell, ‘Toward European Unity., Partisan Review, July–Aug. 1947, reproduced in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol. iv: In Front of Your Nose 1945–50 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1968), pp.370–6.

10. For more on the ‘Third Force’ issue and the IRD's relationship to it see Christopher Mayhew, A War of Words: A Cold War Witness (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), pp.14–47; Hugh Wilford, ‘The Information Research Department: Britain's Secret Cold War Weapon Revealed., Review of International Studies 24/3 (1998), pp.353–69.

11. For the reviewers' ‘wars’ that greeted the publication of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four see Crick, George Orwell, pp.488–92, 563–70, 603–4; Shelden, Orwell, pp.470–4; Donald McCormick, Approaching 1984 (London: David and Charles, 1980), pp.12–13.

12. Crick, George Orwell, pp.450–52, 488; Jeffrey Meyers, A Reader's Guide to George Orwell (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), p.131.

13. Gillian Fenwick (ed.), George Orwell: A Bibliography (New Castle, Delaware: St. Paul's Bibliographies, Winchester/Oak Knoll Press, 1998), pp.126–31.

14. Ibid., p.129; Crick, George Orwell, p.569; Davison (ed.), Our Job is to Make Life Worth Living 1949–1950, pp.134–6.

15. See Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation.

16. Ibid., pp.44–5. Publishing information about the sales of Orwell's books between 1946 and 1970 can be found in Fredric Warburg, All Authors are Equal (London: Hutchinson, 1973), pp.35–59, 92–121.

17. Crick, George Orwell, pp.488–92, 563–70, 603–4; Shelden, Orwell, pp.470–74; McCormick, Approaching 1984, pp.12–13; See Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation 4, passim.

18. Davison (ed.), The Complete Works of George Orwell: xix: It is What I Think 1947–1948 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1998), p.23. A Hungarian edition of Animal Farm was eventually published in 1984. See Fenwick (ed.), George Orwell, p.118.

19. Davison (ed.), It is What I Think 1947–1948, pp.86–9.

20. Ibid., pp.211, 224; Letters from Orwell to Leonard Moore, 10 April 1947 and 24 July 1947, 11 Aug. 1947: Berg Collection, New York Public Library. On the political and diplomatic context of this work in Germany by the US High Commission and the British Foreign Office see Nicholas Pronay and Keith Wilson (eds.), The Political Re-education of Germany and her Allies after World War Two (London: Croom Helm, 1985).

21. On the IRD's establishment and activities in the late 1940s and 1950s see L. Smith, ‘Covert British Propaganda: The Information Research Department, 1947–77., Millennium 9/1 (1980), pp.67–83; R. Fletcher, ‘British Propaganda since World War Two ‘ A Case Study., Media, Culture and Society 4/2 (1982), pp.97–109; W. Wark, ‘Coming in from the Cold: British Propaganda and the Red Army Defectors, 1945–52., The International History Review 9/1 (1987), pp.48–72; W.S. Lucas and C.J. Morris, ‘A Very British Crusade: The Information Research Department and the Beginning of the Cold War., in R. Aldrich (ed.), British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold War (London: Routledge, 1992), pp.85–110; Foreign and Commonwealth Office Library and Records Department, IRD: Origins and Establishment of the Foreign Office Information Research Department 1946–48 (London: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Library and Records Department, 1995); S.L. Carruthers, ‘A Red Under Every Bed? Anti-Communist Propaganda and Britain's Response to Colonial Insurgency., Contemporary Record 9/2 (1995), pp.294–318; Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, Britain's Secret Propaganda War (Stroud: Sutton, 1998); Tony Shaw, ‘The British Popular Press and the Early Cold War., History 83/269 (1998), pp.66–85; Wilford, ‘The Information Research Department.; Tony Shaw, ‘The Information Research Department of the British Foreign Office and the Korean War, 1950–1953., Journal of Contemporary History 34/2 (1999), pp.263–82.

22. PRO FO1110/221/PR1373/G, Minute by Leslie Sheridan, 12 May 1949; FO1110/221/PR1589/G, Ralph Murray to Christopher Mayhew, 10 April 1949; Lashmar and Oliver, Britain's Secret Propaganda War, p.98; Fenwick (ed.), George Orwell, pp.103–4, 136–7.

23. PRO FO1110/221/PR442 IRD circular, 4 March 1949.

24. PRO FO1110/221/PR1589/G Ralph Murray to Christopher Mayhew, 10 April 1949; FO1110/189/PR1135/G Minute by Celia Kirwan, 30 March 1949; FO1110/221/PR505G Ralph Murray to Christopher Warner, 28 Jan. 1949.

25. For the details of Ampersand and other companies that published IRD material between the early 1950s and 1977, when the IRD was closed down, see Lashmar and Oliver, Britain's Secret Propaganda War, pp.100–103.

26. PRO FO1110/264/1634/G June 1949; Davison (ed.), Our Job is to Make Life Worth Living 1949–1950, p.319.

27. PRO FO1110/373/PR8/27/51, Minute by C. Stephenson, 28 March 1951. Hyde had left the Communist Party in 1948 when he was news editor of the Daily Worker. Published by Heinemann, I Believed was a bestselling, sensational account of his work for the ‘cause’ and his conversion to Catholicism. The God That Failed was published in Britain by Hamish Hamilton and by Harper and Bros in the United States in January 1950. Its contributors were Ignazio Silone, André Gide, Richard Wright, Arthur Koestler, Louis Fischer and Stephen Spender. On the book's origins and impact see Anthony Howard, Crossman: The Pursuit of Power (London: Jonathan Cape, 1990), pp.142–3, and Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, pp.64–6.

28. PRO FO1110/716/PR10111/31/G, Report on IRD work, 20 May 1955.

29. PRO FO1110/221, Ernest Main to Ralph Murray, 4 April 1949.

30. PRO FO1110/221/PR3361, letter (translated), V. Puachev to Orwell, 24 June 1949; FO1110/221/PR3361, correspondence between FO and IRD, 18 July 1949; FO 1110/221/PR3361 Celia Kirwan to Charles Thayer, 4 Nov. 1949; Davison (ed.), It is What I Think 1947–1948, p.473; Davison (ed.), Our Job is to Make Life Worth Living 1949–1950, p.153; Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds.), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol.iv: In Front of Your Nose (London: Secker and Warburg, 1968), p.567.

31. Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p.202; Walter Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture and the Cold War, 1945–1961 (London: Macmillan, 1997), pp.123–4.

32. PRO FO1110/319/PR48/82/G, Roderick Parkes to Ralph Murray, 25 Oct. 1950; Minutes by Ralph Murray and Leslie Sheridan, 7 and 10 Nov. 1950.

33. PRO FO1110/365/PR127/9, Ralph Murray circular, 11 Dec. 1950. For details of the production process see FO1110/392/PR32/14/51/G and FO1110/392/PR32/89/G.

34. PRO FO1110/392/PR32/41/51 IRD circular, 25 April 1951.

35. Cited in Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p.434.

36. US National Archives, Washington, DC, RG59 511–4121/6–2651, Acheson to US Embassy London, 26 June 1951.

37. Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p.434; PRO FO1110/373/PR8/78, John Rayner to Ralph Murray, 16 March 1951.

38. PRO FO 1110/738/PR121/68/G, Minute by IRD's Editorial Adviser, 21 Feb. 1955.

39. PRO FO1110/740/PR124/3/G, H.A.H. Cortazzi to Douglas Williams, 28 Jan. 1955.

40. On Orwell's enormous reputation in West Germany, including the efforts by Der Monat, during the Cold War see Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, pp.288ff. For more on Lasky and the CCF's activities in general see Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? and Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Post-War Europe (New York: The Free Press, 1989).

41. I. Anisimov, ‘Enemies of Mankind., Pravda, 12 May 1950, p.3. Translated in Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 1 July 1950, pp.14–15.

42. Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p.202.

43. Ibid., pp.210–11; Arch Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000), pp.12–13, 67; Scott Lucas, Freedom's War: The US Crusade Against the Soviet Union 1945–56 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), pp.100–104, 253–5. On the part played by Secker and Warburg in promoting The Captive Mind as ‘the first full-length story of the position of the intellectual behind the Iron Curtain., see Gordon Johnston, ‘Writing and Publishing the Cold War: John Berger and Secker and Warburg., Twentieth Century British History 12/4 (2001), pp.451. On the influence and availability of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four in Eastern Europe in later Cold War decades see also Timothy Garton Ash in Davison (ed.), Orwell and Politics, pp.xi.xii; Dan Jacobsen, ‘The Invention of ‘Orwell.., The Times Literary Supplement, 21 Aug. 1998, p.3.

44. Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, pp.82–9. As a schoolboy in Manchester, England in the 1970s, I can testify to this on both counts.

45. Peter Davison (ed.), The Complete Works of George Orwell: vol. xiii: Animal Farm (London: Secker and Warburg, 1998), pp.115–24; Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p.202.

46. Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p.273.

47. Nancy E. Bernard, US Television News and Cold War Propaganda 1947–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp.48, 115–31, 155–77. CBS, ABC and DuMont were the three other US television networks.

48. Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p.274; Philip Hamburger, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four., The New Yorker, 3 Oct. 1953, p.84.

49. Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p.274; Emma Lambert, ‘Time, Inc. and the Cultural Cold War during the Eisenhower Administration’, paper presented at the 69th Anglo-American Conference of Historians, Institute of Historical Research, London, 7 July 2000; Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, pp.52, 146–7, 158, 266; Lucas, Freedom's War, pp.166–8.

50. Jason Jacobs, The Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp.139, 151.

51. BBC Written Archives Centre, Reading (hereafter BBC WAC): AC T5/362/2 Television Drama Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954), File 2; BBC WAC Press Cuttings P6555, Book 14a Television Programmes, 1953–4; BBC WAC Transcript of Panorama, 15 Dec. 1954; Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p.275.

52. Paula Burton, British Broadcasting: Radio and Television in the United Kingdom (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956), pp.275–6.

53. BBC WAC T5/362/2 Television Drama 1984 (1954), File 2; BBC WAC Press Cuttings P6555, Book 14a Television Programmes, 1953–4; BBC WAC Transcript of ‘Panorama., 15 Dec. 1954; Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, pp.274–80.

54. ‘BBC Repeats 1984 Despite Objections., The New York Times, 17 Dec. 1954, p.35; Jacobs, The Intimate Screen, p.155.

55. See Foreign and Commonwealth Office Library and Records Department, IRD, pp.17–18; Wilford, ‘The Information Research Department., pp.364–6; Lashmar and Oliver, Britain's Secret Propaganda War, pp.57–65; Mayhew, A War of Words, passim.

56. Both the Honorary Secretary, Michael Goodwin, and General Secretary, John Clews, of the British Society for Cultural Freedom were IRD contract employees. Warburg, All Authors are Equal, pp.154–7; Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, especially pp.109–11.

57. Daily Express, 14 Dec. 1954, in BBC WAC Press Cuttings P6555, Book 14a Television Programmes, 1953–4; Nigel Kneale, ‘The Last Rebel in Airstrip One., Radio Times, 10 Dec. 1954, p.15. Kneale had created the immensely popular and critically acclaimed 1953 science-fiction BBC television serial, ‘Quatermass’. This might help to account for the science-fiction feel of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four..

58. ‘1984 and All That., Daily Mail, 14 Dec. 1954, p.1; ‘1984., Daily Express, 15 Dec. 1954; ‘The Lesson of ‘1984.., Daily Mail, 18 Dec. 1954, p.1; Peter Black, ‘Honest Orwell Did Not Write To Horrify, in Love with Freedom He wanted To Warn., Daily Mail, 14 Dec. 1954, p.4.

59. ‘1984.’, The Times, 15 Dec. 1954, p.5. Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, writes: ‘It is probably unusual that one can point to a single moment from which a writer's popular reputation is ‘launched., but in Orwell's case the date is clear: Sunday, 12 Dec. 1954., (p.274). On the huge sales of Nineteen Eighty-Four after the BBC play, see ibid., p.281.

60. These letters can be found in BBC WAC T5/362/2 Television Drama ‘1984. (1954), File 2.

61. The Times, 16 Dec. 1954; New Statesman, 18 Dec. 1954: BBC WAC Press Cuttings P6555, Book 14a Television Programmes, 1953–4; Isaac Deutscher, ‘1984 ‘ Mysticism of Cruelty., reprinted in Heretics and Renegades, and Other Essays (London: Jonathan Cape, 1955), p.35. Susan L. Carruthers (Rutgers) has undertaken further analysis of the role of novels by Orwell and Arthur Koestler in the construction of Cold War perceptions of Soviet ‘totalitarianism’. See, for example, ‘.More Dramatic than Fact.: Cold War Fiction, Modernity and the Total State., paper delivered at the July 2001 conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, Washington, DC, USA.

62. Contract for Animal Farm between RD-DR Corporation and Halas and Batchelor Cartoon Films Ltd., 19 Nov. 1951, Halas and Batchelor Collections, London; Letter from Borden Mace, President of RD-DR Corporation, during the making of Animal Farm, to author, 28 March 1998; Daily Film Renter, 28 Nov. 1951; Howard Hunt, Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent (London: W.H. Allen, 1975), p.70.

63. Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared ‘ The Early Years of the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), pp.29–30, 32–3, 63; Harry Rositzke, The CIA's Secret Operations (New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1977), pp.149–54; John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (London: Sceptre, 1988), pp.198–202, 216–24.

64. Paul Wells, ‘Dustbins, Democracy and Defence: Halas and Batchelor and the Animated Film in Britain 1940–1947., in Pat Kirkham and David Thoms (eds.), War Culture: Social Change and the Changing Experience in World War Two (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995), pp.61–72; Elaine Burrows, ‘Live Action: A Brief History of British Animation., in Charles Barr (ed.), All Our Yesterdays (London: British Film Institute, 1986), pp.272–85; Letter from Borden Mace, President of RD-DR Corporation, during the making of Animal Farm, to author, 28 March 1998.

65. Notes on discussion of script changes, Sept. and Oct. 1951, and on changes made in dialogue and timing, September 1952, Animal Farm archive, Halas and Batchelor collection, Southampton Institute's International Animation Research Archive (SIIARA); Letter from Borden Mace to author, 28 March 1998; Review of Crime of the Century (British title of Walk East on Beacon), Monthly Film Bulletin, Sept. 1952.

66. Letter from John Halas to Warburg, 12 Nov. 1952, Animal Farm archive, Halas and Batchelor collection, SIIARA; Crick, George Orwell, p.560, p.567. Secker and Warburg published an illustrated edition of Animal Farm based on the film in 1954. For more on the linkages between Secker and Warburg and the CCF see Johnston, ‘Writing and Publishing the Cold War., pp.432–60.

67. Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), vol.i, 1951 (Washington DC, 1979), pp.178–80, paper approved by the PSB, 28 September 1951 ‘ ‘Role of PSB under 4/4/51 Presidential Directive.; Scott Lucas, ‘Campaigns of Truth: The Psychological Strategy Board and American Ideology, 1951–1953., The International History Review 18/2 (1996), pp.279–302; Hixson, Parting the Curtain, pp.17–19.

68. Richard Hirsch, PSB, to Tracy Barnes, ‘Comment on ‘Animal Farm. Script., 23 Jan. 1952, PSB Index Files 062–2., Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. This emphasis on the simplicity of the propaganda message also surfaced in January 1952 during the PSB's consideration of an enhanced role for literature as an anti-communist weapon. Cleverly distributed, clearly written and effectively subsidized, ‘a literature of counter-ideology’ would spell out ‘the lie inherent in Soviet propaganda.. Godel to Barnes, 14 Jan. 1952, United States Declassified Document Reference System (hereafter DDRS) 1991, 1113.

69. George Orwell, Animal Farm (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), p.88.

70. Ibid., p.120.

71. Patrick Murray, Companion to Animal Farm (Dublin: The Educational Press, 1985), p.39; Crick, George Orwell, p.451.

72. Script change discussions, March and Nov. 1952, Animal Farm archive, Halas and Batchelor collection, SIIARA; Author's correspondence with Vivian Halas, Feb. 1998; Lucas, Freedom's War.

73. Sol Stein, ACCF Executive Director, letter to Paris Theatre manager, 5 Jan. 1955; Stein memorandum concerning discount coupons for Animal Farm, 11 Jan. 1955; Murray Baron circular to trade unions, 17 Jan. 1955; Borden Mace letter to Stein concerning MGM distribution, 14 Jan. 1955: Box 8, folder 2, ACCF archives, Tamiment Library, New York University.

74. PRO FO 1110/740/PR124/3/G, H.A.H. Cortazzi to Douglas Williams, 28 Jan. 1955; FO 1110/740/PR124/6/G, Information Section Saigon Embassy to Information Policy Department, 9 March 1955.

75. Cited in Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p.445.

76. Spencer Brown, ‘Strange Things at Animal Farm., Commentary (Feb. 1955), p.157; David Sylvester, ‘Orwell on the Screen., Encounter 4/3 (1955), pp.35–7.

77. Catholic Herald, cited in Films and Filming 1/6 (1955); Daily Mail, 12 Jan. 1955.

78. Hunt, Undercover, p.70; Hixson, Parting the Curtain, pp.87–119.

79. International newspaper cuttings scrapbook, Animal Farm archive, Halas and Batchelor collection, SIIARA; Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, pp.382–98. For a fuller analysis of the 1950s' cinematic versions of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four see Tony Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), ch.4.

80. Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, p.295.

81. Daily Film Renter, 23 Dec. 1954; Daily Mail, 22 Dec. 1954; News Chronicle, 4 July 1955; The Daily Herald, 5 Aug. 1955; Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, pp.288–9, 295.

82. Sunday Citizen, 14 Oct. 1962.

83. Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, p.289. Anti-communist movies with which Columbia was involved included Walk a Crooked Mile (Gordon Douglas, 1948), Invasion USA (Alfred E. Green, 1952) and aforementioned Walk East on Beacon (Alfred Werker, 1952).

84. Stein's letter to Rathvon, 31 Jan. 1955, Box 4, folder 11, ACCF archives, Tamiment Library, New York University; Stein's correspondence with author, 28 April 1998.

85. The ending of the film released in the United States corresponded with Orwell's book, with Winston and Julia estranged and the two of them having learned to love Big Brother. Owing to the lack of production records it is not entirely clear why two endings with different messages were made. For a (positive) review of the American version see The New York Times, 1 Oct. 1956. For the decisions on the two endings see The Times, 10 March 1957, p.7.

86. Sunday Citizen, 14 Oct. 1962.

87. The Daily Herald, 2 March 1956; Daily Mail, 1 March 1956; Sunday Express, 4 March 1956; Daily Mail, 27 Feb. 1956.

88. Motion Picture Association of America spokesman, cited in Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p.445. Neither 1984 nor Animal Farm were listed during 1955–57 by Variety, which computes the box-office sales of all films that gross above $1 million.

89. Ironically, Redgrave was on Orwell's list of suspected crypto-communists and fellow-travellers given to the IRD in 1949. See Davison (ed.), Our Job is to Make Life Worth Living 1949–1950, p.254.

90. Sight and Sound 53/2 (1984); New Statesman and Nation, 10 March 1956.

91. Daily Mail, 27 Feb. 1956; The Times, 15 Nov. 1983. The second cinematic adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four appeared in 1984. Also titled 1984, this was a British film directed by Michael Radford, produced by Virgin, and starring John Hurt (as Winston) and Richard Burton (as O.Brien). For more details of this film, which largely stayed faithful to the book, see in Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, pp.285–7.

92. Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, pp.202–4; FBI file: C.F. Downing to Mr. Parsons, 31 March 1959, ‘Smear Campaign: Committee for a Return to the Homeland ‘ Internal Security ‘ Russia., http://foia.fbi.gov/orwell/orwell1.pdf. During the later stages of the Cold War domestic critics of the US government also saw Nineteen Eighty-Four as an analysis of ‘Orwellian’ aspects of the American social and political system, including the FBI, the CIA and advertising agencies, whose uses of language were often compared to newspeak. See Richard A. Schwartz, Cold War Culture: Media and the Arts, 1945–1990 (New York: Checkmark Books, 2000), p.230.

93. PRO FO371/56912/N1221G/10772/38, Minutes by Pierson Dixon, 22 Aug. and 18 Sept. 1946; FO371/56912/N1221G/10772/38, Christopher Warner to Robert Bruce Lockhart, 2 Sept. 1946; FO1110/221/PR505/G, Ralph Murray to Christopher Warner, 28 Jan. 1949; Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London: John Murray, 2001), pp.106–7, 139. A good example of the politico-scholarly veneration of Solzhenitsyn's work in the West during the Cold War is John Dunlop, Richard Haugh and Alexis Klimoff (eds.), Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Critical Essays and Documentary Materials (New York: Collier Books, 1975). On Solzhenitsyn's acknowledgement of the importance of Orwell in heightening awareness of the dangers of communism in the West see Joseph Pearce, Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile (London: HarperCollins, 1989), p.106.

94. Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p.16; Timothy Garton Ash in Davison (ed.), Orwell and Politics, p.xi.

95. For further information on this film see: http://alt.tnt.tv/movies/tntoriginals/animalfarm/atf/info.html. For a critical reaction to it see: www.wsws.org/articles/1999/nov1999/anim‐n12.shtml.

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