Orwell's letters and papers

Re the cache of letters recently found, I once took a cycling trip and called in at the cottage Orwell used to live in at Wallington near Baldock.  This was about 1974.  The lady then resident was a retired schoolmistress (headmistress I think) and she showed my round the tiny cottage – “The Stores” as it was called in Orwell’s time.  She had bought it from the people who bought it from Orwell, and they had told her that when they moved in there were several cardboard boxes in the back room, filled with old papers, letters, manuscripts and all sorts of stuff.  She asked what had happened to them and they said they made a bonfire of them in the back garden.  This was long before Orwell became famous through Animal Farm.  To them he was just a jobbing journalist and the boxes were no more than rubbish.  Today those boxes would have fetched millions from the University of Texas of wherever Orwell’s archive is located.

Regards ~ 

TREVOR HOYLE