The War Commentaries

Ill-health meant that Orwell's anti-fascist war effort was undertaken in the studios of the BBC. This volume, a companion to "The War Broadcasts", contains the lost texts of his commentaries transmitted between 1941 and 1943 when he was working for the Indian Section. Although he was openly opposed to the government's policy in India, he was none the less selected to devise an authoritative view of the war which would counter the broadcasts beamed out by the Nazi station, Radio Azad Hind. The result is a record of the propoganda war as Orwell fought it and a week-by-week picture of events, albeit inhibited by the censor. The commentaries also provide an insight into the genesis of many themes in Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four".