3,232 words
Connolly, Burnham, Orwell, & “Corner Table”
“In the torture scenes, he is merely melodramatic: he introduces those rather grotesque machines which used to appear in terror stories for boys.”
—V. S. Pritchett, The New Statesman, June 18, 1949
), once played an important role in the Spanish Civil War as an agent of the Comintern. Through his writings, he set the tone of an anti-Francoist propaganda that has endured. Later, his deceptions made him an acute critic of Stalinism. 
Orwell, Molotov, & the “Crisis of Capitalism”
O’Brien (Richard Burton) demonstrates that 2 + 2 doesn’t always equal 4.
2,306 words
Did the international crises of 1947 and 1948 leave their mark on the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four? I’ve spent a lot of time on this question, and so far as I can tell, the answer is – yes; but only obliquely. And George Orwell may not even have been conscious of the fact.
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