George Orwell Statue

A STATUE of the writer and social critic George Orrwell is to be unveiled at the BBC HQ in London this coming Tuesday.  Orwell worked for the BBC from August 1941 to September 1943.  He was placed in the BBC's Overseas Service as a talks assistant, with other outsiders such as the anarchist art critic Herbert Read.

When the Freedom anarchist, George Woodcock, in Partisan Review in 1942 criticised Orwell, while Orwell was working for the BBC, for being 'the preacher of a doctrine of Physical Courage as an Asset to the Left-wing intellectual...' and 'conducting British propaganda to fox the Indian spendemasses'.

To which Orwell pointed out that 'Most of our broadcasters are Indian left-wing intellectuals, from Liberals to Trotskyists, some of them bitterly anti-British'.

He mentions as an example Herbert Read as a broadcaster, and others included T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, Reginald Renolds, Stephen Spender, J.B.S. Haldane, Tom Wintringham.

 

 John Sutherland, Emeritus Professor of Modern English Literature,writes:

'The stimulating arguments are not the best thing that came out of Orwell’s brief work at the BBC. They’re the only thing. I hope there’s a faint sneer on the statue’s face.'

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