This volume shows how much George Orwell achieved during his Two wasted years at the BBC. It covers the programmes broadcast that were either written by Orwell or had his input in some form or other. The book contains reviews, essays, and a printing of The Detective Story in French.

Writing to Philip Rahv on 9 December 1943, Orwell described his time at the BBC as 'two wasted years', yet this volume continues to show how much he achieved. Among the educational series in this period were those devoted to new developments in science, modern English verse, great dramatists, and psychology; there were series, such as 'Books That Changed the World' which included broadcast talks on great books from East and West. Among those who broadcast for Orwell were John Lehmann, V. S. Pritchett and Stephen Spender. Oliver Bell, Director of the British Film Instistute, took over film reviewing, and the series of shortened versions of Indian plays continued. Orwell adapted four 'featurised stories', and broadcast talks on MACBETH and LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN. He continued to broadcast to Malaya and wrote and read news commentaries for Indonesia. He wrote over a dozen reviews, several essays, and a long study, 'The Detective Story' printed here for the first time in its original French version and in an English translation.The volume concludes with two appendices: the devastating report by the Intelligence Officer, Laurence Brander on the ineffectiveness of the BBC's broadcasting service to India; and, Orwell's preparatory notes for 'The Quick & the Dead' and 'The Last Man in Europe'.

This bold new reading of Orwell's work focuses upon his representation of communities and the myths that shape them. It analyzes his interpretations of class, gender and nationality within the context of the period. The book uses a range of texts to argue that Orwell attempted to integrate 'traditional' communal identities with socialist politics.

A collection of George Orwell's previously unpublished letters, documents and photographs.

In a timely and radically new reappraisal of George Orwell's fiction, Loraine Saunders reads Orwell's novels as tales of successful emancipation rather than as chronicles of failure. Contending that Orwell's novels have been undervalued as works of art, she offers extensive textual analysis to reveal an author who is in far more control of his prose than has been appreciated. Persuasively demonstrating that Orwell's novels of the 1930s such as A Clergyman's Daughter and Keep the Aspidistra Flying are no less important as literature than Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Saunders argues they have been victims of a critical tradition whose practitioners have misunderstood Orwell's narrative style, failed to appreciate Orwell's political stance, and were predisposed to find little merit in Orwell's novels. Saunders devotes significant attention to George Gissing's influence on Orwell, particularly with regard to his representations of women. She also examines Orwell's socialism in the context of the political climate of the 1930s, finding that Orwell, in his successful negotiation of the fine balance between art and propaganda, had much more in common with Charlie Chaplin than with writers like Stephen Spender or W. H. Auden. As a result of Saunders's detailed and accessible analysis, which illuminates how Orwell harmonized allegory with documentary, polyphonic voice with monophonic, and elegy with comedy, Orwell's contributions to the genre of political fiction are finally recognized.