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
was published by Olympia Press around fifty years ago and deals with the Korean War, but it is still relevant for all that. It concerns the Communist brain-washing techniques used by the Maoist Chinese forces on American prisoners of war during that conflict. These were based on various behaviorist ideas which were very much in the air at that time and were used extensively by the KGB, CIA , MI6, the French secret services, and other parallel or adjacent bodies. 
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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