The Ministry of Truth

by Dorian Lynskey

  “old, tired and shrivelled”—Quoted in Mackenzie, p. 424.

  “I have no gang”—Quoted in ibid., p. 413.

  “Time to Go”—Ibid., p. 445.

  CHAPTER 5: RADIO ORWELL

  “All propaganda is lies”—Orwell, War-time Diary, March 14, 1942, CW XIII, 1025, p. 229.

  “excellent company”—Anthony Powell, To Keep the Ball Rolling Volume II: Messengers of Day (Heinemann, 1978), p. 24.

  “that screaming little defective”—Orwell, “Wells, Hitler and the World State,” CW XII, 837, p. 537.

  “Wells is too sane” and “since 1920”—Ibid., p. 540.

  “intellectual brutality” and “a human being”—Orwell letter to Stephen Spender, April 15, 1938, in CW XI, 435, p. 132.

  “one of those unusual beings”—George Woodcock, Orwell’s Message: 1984 and the Present (Harbour Publishing, 1984), p. 124.

  The argument at Langford Court—The most reliable account of the dinner is in Inez Holden’s diaries, reprinted in Crick, pp. 429–30.

  “an amusing evening”—Crick, p. 430.

  “solve all the ills”—Orwell, “The Rediscovery of Europe,” The Listener, March 19, 1942, CW XIII, 1014, p. 213.

  “foolish generalisations”—H. G. Wells letter to The Listener, April 9, 1942, ibid., p. 218.

  “I don’t say that at all”—Quoted in Sherbone, p. 333.

  “two wasted years”—Orwell letter to Philip Rahv, December 9, 1943, CW XVI, 2390, p. 22.

  “strange boring nightmare”—Orwell, “English Writing in Total War,” New Republic, July 14, 1941, CW XII, 831, p. 530.

  “all complacent optimists”—H. V. Morton, I, James Blunt (Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1942), p. 58.

  “Lord Murdoch and General Pointer do not exist”—Robin Maugham, The 1946 MS. (War Facts Press, 1943), p. 45.

  “good flesh-creeper”—Orwell, “Review of Pamphlet Literature,” New Statesman and Nation, January 9, 1943, CW XIV, 1807, p. 301.

  “Only the mentally dead”—Orwell, “London Letter,” Partisan Review, March– April 1941, CW XII, 740, p. 355.

  “We must remember”—Connolly, The Condemned Playground, p. 273.

  “the practice of lying”—Orwell, Review of An Epic of the Gestapo by Sir Paul Dukes, Tribune, September 13, 1940, CW XII, 686, p. 258.

  “so unspeakable”—Orwell, Review of The Lights Go Down by Erika Mann, Tribune, August 23, 1940, CW XII, 676, p. 238.

  “the horrible political jungle”—Orwell, Review of Never Come Back by John Mair, New Statesman and Nation, January 4, 1941, CW XII, 741, p. 359.

  “expected to sell his honour”—Orwell, “Confessions of a Book Reviewer,” Tribune, May 3, 1946, CW XVIII, 2992, p. 302.

  “easily bored”—Anthony Powell, To Keep the Ball Rolling Volume I: Infants of the Spring (Heinemann, 1976), p. 139.

  “sadism”—Orwell, Time and Tide, August 9, 1941, CW XII, 840, p. 542.

  “the nightmare atmosphere”—Orwell, Time and Tide, January 25, 1941, CW XII, 751, p. 375.

  “a sort of concentrated essence” and “power to reassert”—Orwell, Time and Tide, December 21, 1940, CW XII, 727, p. 315.

  “Rat Soup”—Orwell, “As I Please,” Tribune, December 31, 1943, CW XVI, 2398, p. 46.

  “less terrifying”—Orwell, “London Letter,” CW XII, 740, p. 354.

  “a constant scramble”—Orwell, War-time Diary, September 7, 1940, CW XII, 685, p. 254.

  “getting glimpses”—Orwell, War-time Diary, October 19, 1940, CW XII, 698, p. 277.

  “By the middle of 1941”—Orwell, “In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse,” The Windmill, no. 2, July 1945, CW XVII, 2624, p. 60.

  Orwell enjoyed retelling—Orwell, War-time Diary, July 6, 1941, CW XII, 829, p. 525.

  “switched from one line”—Orwell, CW IX, p. 189.

  “Within two years”—Orwell, War-time Diary, May 18, 1941, CW XII, 803, p. 501.

  “not merely”—Crick, p. 356.

  “The British Government”—Orwell, “Poetry and the Microphone,” The New Saxon Pamphlet, no. 3, March 1945, CW XVII, 2629, p. 79.

  “The peculiarity of the totalitarian state”—“Literature and Totalitarianism,” May 21, 1941, CW XII, 804, p. 504.

  “the Liars’ School”—Coppard and Crick, p. 177.

  “There is no victory in sight”—Orwell, War-time Diary, August 28, 1941, CW XIII, 849, p. 23.

  “If liberty means anything”—Orwell, “The Freedom of the Press,” CW XVII, 2721, p. 2560.

  “an enormous pyramidal structure”—Orwell, CW IX, p. 5.

  “to diminish the range of thought”—Ibid., p. 313.

  “you cannot make a meaningless statement”—Orwell, “As I Please,” Tribune, August 18, 1944, 2534, p. 338.

  “There are areas where”—Orwell, “As I Please,” Tribune, April 4, 1947, CW XIX, 3208, p. 118.

  “The bigger the machine”—Orwell, “Poetry and the Microphone,” CW XVII, 2629, p. 80.

  “I believe that the B.B.C.”—Orwell, “London Letter,” Partisan Review, July– August 1941, CW XII, 787, p. 472.

  “going through a London fog”—Wadhams, p. 105.

  “for being so ignorant”—J. B. Clark, BBC memo, January 19, 1943.

  “inherently totalitarian”—Orwell, “As I Please,” April 7, 1944, CW XVI, 2450, p. 147.

  “put on your thinking-cap”—Z. A. Bokhari memo to Orwell, September 23, 1941, CW XIII, 846, p. 12.

  “university of the air”—George Orwell, The War Broadcasts, ed. W. J. West (Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 1985), p. 13.

  “Few people are able”—Orwell, “Poetry and the Microphone,” CW XVII, 2629, p. 79.

  “I suppose during every second”—“Voice,” August 11, 1942, CW XIII, 1373, p. 459.

  “Crocuses now full out”—Orwell, War-time Diary, March 27, 1942, CW XIII, 1064, p. 249.

  “Its atmosphere is something”—Orwell, War-time Diary, March 14, 1942, CW XIII, 1025, p. 229.

  “The thing that strikes one”—Orwell, War-time Diary, June 18, 1942, CW XIII, 1231, p. 366.

  “He was never quite sure”—Wadhams, p. 132.

  “And now Comrade Orwell”—“Pacifism and the War: A Controversy,” CW XIII, 1270, p. 395.

  “kept our propaganda”—Orwell letter to George Woodcock, December 2, 1942, CW XIV, 1711, p. 214.

  “We were listening to ‘Germany Calling’ ”—Wadhams, p. 128.

  “I think he thought”—Arena: George Orwell.

  “It doesn’t need the eye”—Orwell, “As One Non-Combatant to Another (A letter to ‘Obadiah Hornbooke’),” Tribune, June 18, 1943, The Complete Works of George Orwell XV: Two Wasted Years 1943 (Secker & Warburg, 2001), 2138, p. 144.

  “Nowadays”—Orwell, War-time Diary, April 1942, CW XIII, 1124, pp. 288–89.

  “If George and I didn’t smoke so much”—Crick, p. 432.

  “the typical figure”—Orwell, Macbeth adaptation, BBC Eastern Service, October 17, 1943, 2319, pp. 280–81.

  “probably the most devastating”—Orwell, “Can Socialists Be Happy?,” CW XVI, 2397, p. 40.

  “an extraordinarily clear prevision”—Orwell, “Politics vs Literature,” CW XVIII, 3089, p. 427.

  “He couldn’t see”—Orwell, “Too Hard on Humanity,” The Listener, November 26, 1942, CW XIV, 1637, p. 161.

  “Orwell never completely lost faith”—Observer, January 29, 1950, reprinted in Meyers (ed.), p. 298.

  “remarkably dreary”—Orwell, “Can Socialists Be Happy?,” CW XVI, 2397, p. 40.

  “A certain smugness”—Orwell, “Review of an Unknown Land,” CW XIV, 1768, p. 254.

  “a very remarkable prophecy”—Orwell, talk on Jack London, BBC, March 5, 1943, CW XV, 1916, p. 5.

  “a very poor book”—Ibid., p. 6.

  “a Socialist with the instincts”—Orwell, Introduction to Love of Life and Other Stories by Jack London, 1945, CW XVII, 2781, p. 355.

  “I am first of all a white man”
—Andrew Sinclair, Jack: A Biography of Jack London (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978), p. 108.

  “one of Nietzsche’s blond-beasts”—Jack London, “How I Became a Socialist,” The Comrade, March 1903.

  “You have mismanaged the world”—Joan London, Jack London and His Times: An Unconventional Biography (Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1939), p. 308.

  “his gladiator body”—Jack London, The Iron Heel (Everett & Co., 1908), p. 195.

  “1984 as it might have been penned”—Earle Labor, Jack London (Twayne, 1974), p. 114.

  “In reading it one does not”—Joan London, p. 315.

  “one of the best statements”—Orwell, “Jack London,” Forces Educational Broadcast, Light Programme, BBC, October 8, 1945, CW XVII, 2761, p. 303.

  “Intellectually he knew”—Introduction to Love of Life and Other Stories, CW XVII, 2781, p. 354.

  “streak of brutality”—Orwell, talk on Jack London, CW XV, p. 6.

  “understanding of the primitive,” “better prophet” and “You might say”—Ibid., p. 7.

  “the vision of a boot crashing down”—Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, CW XII, 763, p. 396.

  “a warning”—London, The Iron Heel, p. 4.

  “The diary would be reduced to ashes”—Orwell, CW IX, p. 29.

  “in our own lifetime”—Orwell, CW IX, p. 162.

  “leaving a few records behind”—Ibid., p. 163.

  “daringly opens up”—Icke and Macmillan, p. 13.

  “Orwell is much more optimistic”—Earl G. Ingersoll (ed.), Waltzing Again (Ontario Review Press, 2006), p. 116.

  “have a framing device” and “Optimism is relative”—Jesse Kinos-Goodwin, “We are reading 1984 wrong, according to Margaret Atwood,” CBC, May 9, 2017.

  “We are, as a people”—Wells letter to George Bernard Shaw, April 22, 1941.

  “the clearest insistence”—Wells letter to British Weekly, June 26, 1939, quoted in Mackenzie, p. 420.

  “By some time in 1944”—Orwell letter to Rayner Heppenstall, August 24, 1943, CW XV, 2247, p. 206.

  “I should think”—Eileen Blair letter to Orwell, March 21, 1945, Belong, CW XVII, 2638, p. 99.

  “On no occasion”—Orwell letter to L. F. Rushbrook Williams, September 24, 1945, CW XV, 2283, p. 251.

  “He is transparently honest”—Rushbrook Williams, confidential annual report on George Orwell, August 7, 1943.

  On the day he left—see Elizabeth Knights’ account in interview transcript for Arena: George Orwell.

  “for the first time, I saw”—Orwell, “Looking Back on the Spanish War,” CW XIII, 1421, p. 503.

  “the very concept of objective truth,” “controls not only the future”—Ibid., p. 504.

  “that shifting phantasmagoric world”—Ibid., p. 505.

  “truly grave”—Emperor Hirohito, October 26, 1943.

  “If you are a man”—Orwell, CW IX, p. 282.

  “The nightmare feeling”—Orwell, “The Last Man in Europe,” CW XV, 2377, p. 368.

  “Is it perhaps childish”—Orwell, “Looking Back on the Spanish War,” CW XIII, 1421, p. 505.

  CHAPTER 6: THE HERETIC

  “I know that I have”—Yevgeny Zamyatin, “Letter to Stalin” (1931), in Soviet Heretic, trans. Mirra Ginsberg (Quartet, 1991), p. 305.

  “I am interested in that kind of book”—Orwell letter to Gleb Struve, February 17, 1944, CW XVI, 2421, p. 98.

  “it is not a book of the first order”—Orwell, “Freedom and Happiness,” CW XVIII, 2841, p. 13.

  “partly plagiarised”—Orwell letter to Warburg, November 22, 1948, CW XIX, 3495, p. 471.

  “proves that these ideas”—Alex M. Shane, The Life and Works of Evgenij Zamjatin (University of California Press, 1968), p. 140.

  “the idea of 1984”—Isaac Deutscher, “1984—The Mysticism of Cruelty,” in Raymond Williams (ed.), George Orwell: A Collection of Critical Essays (Prentice-Hall, 1974), p. 120.

  “look out for this book”—Orwell, “As I Please,” Tribune, January 24, 1947, CW XIX, 3158, p. 26.

  “my most jesting”—Zamyatin, “Autobiography” (1922), in Soviet Heretic, p. 4.

  “robs people of individuality”—Zamyatin, “Contemporary Russian Literature” (1918), in Soviet Heretic, p. 44.

  “the victory of the many”—Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, trans. Natasha Randall (Vintage, 2007), p. 42.

  “sharp, black, piercing”—Ibid., p. 191.

  “festive rockets”—Ibid., p. 193.

  “When you are moving fast”—Zamyatin, “On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters” (1923), in Soviet Heretic, pp. 111–12.

  “I never explained”—Shane, p. 92.

  “mathematically infallible happiness”—Zamyatin, We, p. 3.

  “Every station bookstall”—Brian Moynahan, Comrades 1917: Russia in Revolution (Little, Brown, 1992), p. 5.

  “like a machine”—Ibid., p. 119.

  “ancient sickness”—Ibid., p. 67.

  “a rather weak and episodic plot”—Orwell, “Freedom and Happiness,” CW XVIII, 2841, p. 14.

  “machine-equal”—Zamyatin, We, p. 158.

  “Because reason should win”—Ibid., p. 203.

  “one of the literary curiosities”—Orwell, “Freedom and Happiness,” CW XVIII, 2841, p. 13.

  “Perhaps the most interesting”—Yevgeny Zamyatin, “Autobiography” (1922), in Soviet Heretic, p. 4.

  “Gogol was a friend”—Zamyatin, “Autobiography” (1924), in Soviet Heretic, p. 5.

  “He also finished”—Zamyatin, “Autobiography” (1929), in Soviet Heretic, p. 9.

  “an eternal rebel”—Gleb Struve, 25 Years of Soviet Russian Literature (1918–1943) (George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1944), p. 22.

  “In those years”—Zamyatin, “Autobiography” (1929), in Soviet Heretic, p. 10.

  “If I have any place”—Zamyatin, “Autobiography” (1922), in Soviet Heretic, p. 4.

  “When the smoke”—Zamyatin, “Moscow–Petersburg” (1933), in Soviet Heretic, p. 144.

  “Yesterday, the thesis”—Zamyatin, “Tomorrow” (1919), in Soviet Heretic, p. 51.

  “Eternal dissatisfaction”—Ibid.

  “works only for the distant future”—Zamyatin, “Scythians?” (1918), in Soviet Heretic, p. 22.

  “a kind of unofficial minister”—Zamyatin, “Maxim Gorky” (1936), in Soviet Heretic, p. 250.

  “The writer who cannot”—Zamyatin, “I Am Afraid” (1921), in Soviet Heretic, p. 57.

  “You really do have to be an acrobat”—Quoted in Martin Amis, Koba the Dread (Vintage, 2003), p. 168.

  “True literature”—Zamyatin, “I Am Afraid” (1921), in Soviet Heretic, p. 57.

  “amenable, quick-witted”—Martha Weitzel Hickey, The Writer in Petrograd and the House of Arts (Northwestern University Press, 2009), p. 137.

  “mechanical, chemical”—Zamyatin, “H. G. Wells” (1922), in Soviet Heretic, p. 259.

  “Most of his social fantasies”—Ibid., p. 287.

  “We, by the author of this essay”—Ibid., p. 290.

  “a poor conventional creature”—Orwell, “Freedom and Happiness,” CW XVIII, 2841, pp. 14–15.

  “strange and irritating”—Zamyatin, We, p. 8.

  “wanted someone, anyone”—Ibid., p. 187.

  “the choice for mankind”—Orwell, CW IX, p. 275.

  “stone wall”—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground and The Double (Penguin, 2009), p. 12.

  “After twice two is four”—Ibid., p. 32.

  “Freedom is the freedom to say”—Orwell, CW IX, p. 84.

  “It is this intuitive grasp”—Orwell, “Freedom and Happiness,” CW XVIII, 2841, p. 15.

  “seems to me to form”—Orwell letter to Warburg, March 30, 1949, CW XIX, 3583, p. 72.

  “the monster”—Ayn Rand, Anthem (Cassell & Company, 1938), p. 134.

  “a world of the future”—Robert Mayhew (ed.), Essays on Ayn Rand’s Anthem (Lexin
gton Books, 2005), p. 119.

  “a grisly forecast”—Ibid., p. 56.

  “It is so very personally mine”—Ibid., p. 24.

  “To be free”—Rand, p. 141.

  “Work hard, increase production”—THX 1138 (dir. George Lucas), 1971.

  “the way I see LA right now” and “It’s the idea that we are all living in cages”—Quoted in John Baxter, George Lucas: A Biography (HarperCollins, 1999), p. 104.

  “the genius of Ayn Rand”—Sleevenotes, Rush, 2112 (Anthem Records, 1976).

  “any collectivist mentality”—J. Kordosh, “Rush. But Why Are They in Such a Hurry?,” Creem, June 1981.

  “Each morning”—Zamyatin, We, pp. 12–13.

  “give readers the impression”—Mayhew (ed.), p. 26.

  “Look at all these things”—The Lego Movie (dir. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, 2014).

  “It is important”—Gleb Struve letter to Tribune, January 25, 1946, CW XVIII, 2841, p. 16.

  “This novel is a warning”—Les Nouvelles littéraires, no. 497, April 23, 1932.

  “if the Church told me”—Quoted in D. J. Richards, Zamyatin: A Soviet Heretic (Bowes & Bowes, 1962), p. 43.

  “Zamyatin simply could not”—Hillegas, p. 105.

  “The collective ‘We’ ”—Mayhew (ed.), p. 139.

  “But, I-330”—Zamyatin, We, p. 153.

  “hopelessly bad”—Shane, p. 27.

  “ridiculing and humiliating”—Ibid., p. 59.

  “certain themes cannot”—Orwell, “The Prevention of Literature,” Polemic, January 1946, CW XVII, 2792, p. 378.

  “They all merge”—Zamyatin, “Paradise” (1921), in Soviet Heretic, p. 65.

  “Everything was levelled”—Zamyatin, “Moscow-Petersburg,” in Soviet Heretic, p. 153.

  “In the old days”—Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (NYRB, 2012), p. 308.

  “the first year”—Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 537.

  “voted whatever was required”—Serge, p. 308.

  “Facts are stubborn”—Quoted in Max Eastman, Artists in Uniform (G. Allen & Unwin, 1934), p. 87.

  “Zamyatin’s crime”—Ibid., p. 85.

  “a mean libel”—Struve, p. 130.

  “it becomes possible”—Zamyatin, “Letter to Stalin,” in Soviet Heretic, p. 308.

  “death sentence”—Ibid., p. 309.

  “I know that, while I have been”—Ibid., p. 308.