The Ministry of Truth

by Dorian Lynskey

  “if I was going to smear somebody”—Orwell letter to Mr. Shaw, June 20, 1949, CW XX, 3650, p. 139.

  “some very shame-making publicity”—Orwell letter to Richard Rees, July 28, 1949, CW XX, 3669, p. 154.

  “will pretend to be much more”—Orwell’s Statement on Nineteen Eighty-Four, CW XX, 3636, p. 134.

  “NOT intended as an attack on socialism” and “I do not believe”—Orwell’s Statement on Nineteen Eighty-Four, CW XX, 3636, p. 136.

  “didn’t do two pennorth of good”—Warburg, p. 119.

  “Having read Mr. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four”—NBC University Theater: Nineteen Eighty-Four, NBC, August 27, 1949.

  “kinetic”—New York Times, June 12, 1949.

  “shocking”—Fredric Warburg’s Report on His Visit to Orwell, CW XX, 3645, p. 131.

  “Orwell was totally unfit”—Jeffrey Meyers, Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation (W. W. Norton & Company, 2001), p. 304.

  “slightly macabre”—Muggeridge, Like It Was, p. 354.

  “Her body seemed”—Orwell, CW IX, p. 143.

  “He said he would get better”—Spurling, p. 96.

  “the astonishing selfishness”—Review of The Two Carlyles by Osbert Burdett, The Adelphi, March 1931, CW XI, 103, p. 197.

  “skin and bone”—Wadhams, p. 210.

  “There was a kind of rage”—Muggeridge, Like It Was, p. 368.

  “A silence fell”—George Woodcock, The Crystal Spirit, p. 45.

  “fast, clear, gray prose”—New Statesman and Nation, January 28, 1950, reprinted in Meyers (ed.), p. 296.

  “the wintry conscience”—Ibid., p. 294.

  “the greatness and tragedy”—Observer, January 29, 1950, reprinted in Meyers (ed.), p. 297.

  “exceptional concordance”—Ibid., p. 296.

  “how the legend of a human being”—Muggeridge, Like It Was, p. 376.

  “everyone else—above all Pritchett”—Quoted in Cesarani, p. 347.

  “She had persuaded herself”—Spurling, p. 99.

  “She blamed herself”—Wadhams, p. 211.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 10: BLACK MILLENNIUM

  “If that is what the world is going to be like”—Daily Mirror, December 13, 1954.

  “the production and message”—Memo, D. K. Wolfe-Murray to Director of Television Broadcasting, December 16, 1954.

  “the subject of the sharpest controversy”—New York Times, December 17, 1954.

  “horrible play”—Daily Mirror, December 16, 1954.

  “cold eyes stared”—Films and Filming, September 1958, quoted in Jason Jacobs, The Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama (Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 138.

  “It was so awful”—Daily Mirror, December 13, 1954.

  “Never has anything more vile”—Daily Express, December 14, 1954.

  “a nauseating story”—Daily Mirror, December 13, 1954.

  “a picture of a world”—Daily Mirror, December 17, 1954.

  “A Million NIGHTMARES”—Daily Express, December 14, 1954.

  “pander to sexual and sadistic tastes”—Daily Mirror, December 15, 1954.

  “Listeners!”—The Goon Show, “Nineteen Eighty-Five,” BBC Home Service, January 4, 1955.

  “probably acquire”—Bernard Hollowood, “On the Air,” Punch, December 22, 1954, quoted in Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p. 279.

  “if someone had written a novel in 1910”—Daily Express, December 14, 1954.

  “the beastliness of Communism” and “probably arose”—Daily Mail, December 14, 1954.

  “the lowest essence”—Guardian, December 22, 1954.

  “a typical brain-washing letter”—Guardian, December 29, 1954.

  “an ideological superweapon”—Isaac Deutscher, “1984: The Mysticism of Cruelty,” reprinted in Williams (ed.), p. 119.

  “marginal”—London Times, December 16, 1954.

  The Secker & Warburg hardback—for sales figures see Warburg, pp. 114–15.

  “Kipling is the only English writer”—Orwell, “Rudyard Kipling,” Horizon, February 1942, CW XIII, 948, p. 157.

  “Some of the words he coined”—Nigel Kneale, “The Last Rebel of Airstrip One,” Radio Times, December 10, 1954.

  “[Flair] is a leap into the Orwellian future”—Mary McCarthy, “Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue,” July-August 1950, reprinted in On the Contrary (Heinemann, 1962), p. 187.

  “what the late George Orwell”—Hansard, HC Deb, November 2, 1950, vol. 480, col. 353.

  “a very remarkable book”—Quoted in Taylor, p. 419.

  “I thought it was a term of affection”—Hansard, HC Deb, June 18, 1956, vol. 554, col. 1026.

  “the book written by the late Mr. George Orwell”—Hansard, HL, February 7, 1951, vol. 170, col. 216.

  “Orwell was really”—Spender, World Review, June 1950.

  “the man who tells the truth”—Lionel Trilling, “George Orwell and the Politics of Truth,” reprinted in Williams (ed.), p. 79.

  “It is chiefly for the sake”—Arendt, p. 601.

  “In the past every tyranny”—Orwell, Review of Russia Under Soviet Rule by N. de Basily, New English Weekly, January 12, 1939, CW XI, 524, p. 317.

  “distorted the meaning of epithets”—Crossman (ed.), p. 261.

  “Dickens is one of those writers”—“Charles Dickens,” CW XII, 597, p. 47.

  “probably had more to do”—Hansard, HC Deb July 21, 1960, vol. 627, col. 770.

  “no slander is too gross”—A. L. Morton, The English Utopia (Lawrence & Wishart, Ltd., 1952), p. 212.

  “realisation of Utopia”—Ibid., p. 213.

  “shrieking into the arms”—Marxist Quarterly, January 1956, reprinted in Meyers (ed.), p. 290.

  “Marxist English, or Pamphletese”—Orwell, “As I Please,” Tribune, March 17, 1944, CW XVI, 2435, p. 124.

  “a Freudian sublimation—Deutscher in Williams (ed.), p. 130.

  “1984 is in effect”—Ibid., pp. 131–32.

  “perhaps more than any other nation”—Golo Mann in Meyers (ed.), p. 277.

  “Because it is both difficult”—Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind (Penguin Classics, 2001), p. 42.

  “the most hated writer”—John Rodden, Scenes from an Afterlife: The Legacy of George Orwell (ISI Books, 2003), p. 71.

  “make allowances”—Life, March 29, 1943.

  “the secret Ministry of Cold War”—Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (Granta, 2000), p. 59.

  “Indifference to objective truth”—Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism,” CW XVII, 2668, p. 148.

  “a word that can be uttered”—Orwell, CW IX, p. 321.

  “Friends, freedom has seized the offensive!”—Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (Free Press, 1989), p. 32.

  “the Noncommunist left”—Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (Da Capo, 1998), p. 148.

  “George Orwell, with his vigorous good sense”—Ibid., p. 147.

  “Western man”—Schlesinger, p. 1.

  Tribune and Partisan Review—For details see Saunders, pp. 162–63, 166.

  “that bunch of homeless Leftists”—Arthur Koestler, The Yogi and the Commissar and Other Essays (Jonathan Cape, 1945), p. 107.

  “I was made an unwitting ‘accomplice’ ”—Dwight Macdonald, Discriminations: Essays & Afterthoughts 1938–1974 (Grossman, 1974), p. 59.

  “it was rather fortunate that Orwell died”—Conor Cruise O’Brien, Listener, December 12, 1968, reprinted in Meyers (ed.), pp. 345–46.

  “deviate very little” and “retain the spirit”—Daniel J. Leab, Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), p. 85.

  “the mood of the book”—Ihor Szewczenko letter to Orwell, April 11, 1946, CW XVIII, 2969, p. 236.

  “fanatic intelle
ctual”—Ibid., p. 79.

  “apparent inference”—Ibid., p. 83.

  “a bitter satire”—Quoted in David Sylvester, “Orwell on the Screen,” Encounter, March 1955.

  “hit the jackpot”—Quoted in David Hencke and Rob Evans, “How Big Brothers Used Orwell to Fight the Cold War,” Guardian, June 30, 2000.

  “a failure aesthetically”—Sylvester.

  “Did she approve”—Today’s Cinema, December 28, 1954.

  “the most devastating anti-Communist film”—Saunders, p. 459.

  “I think we agreed”—Ibid., p. 297.

  “freely adapted” etc.—1984 (dir. Michael Anderson, 1956).

  “Will Ecstasy Be a Crime”—Poster for 1984.

  “The change seemed to me to show” and “the type of ending”—Daily Mail, February 27, 1956.

  “expressed his wholehearted and enthusiastic approval”—Celia Kirwan report on visit to Orwell, March 30, 1949, CW XX, 3590A, p. 319.

  “a list of journalists & writers”—Orwell letter to Celia Kirwan, April 6, 1949, CW XX, 3590B, p. 322.

  “It isn’t very sensational”—Orwell letter to Celia Kirwan, May 2, 1949, CW XX, 3615, p. 103.

  “The whole difficulty”—Orwell letter to Richard Rees, May 2, 1949, CW XX, 3617, p. 105.

  “very tricky”—Orwell letter to Richard Rees, April 17, 1949, CW XX, 3600, p. 88.

  “publicity agents of the USSR”—Orwell, “London Letter,” CW XIII, 2990, p. 291.

  “Members of the present British government”—Orwell’s Statement on Nineteen Eighty-Four, CW XX, 3636, p. 135.

  “I have been obliged at times”—Randall Swingler, “The Right to Free Expression,” annotated by Orwell, Polemic, no. 5, September–October 1946, CW XVIII, 3090, p. 442.

  “some kind of Russian agent”—Lost Orwell, pp. 147–48.

  “calamitous”—Orwell, “Burnham’s View of the Contemporary World Struggle,” CW XIX, 3204, p. 103.

  “vaguely disquieting”—Orwell letter to George Woodcock, March 23, 1948, CW XIX, 3369, p. 301.

  “advanced communist views” and “he does not hold with the Communist Party”—Stephen Bates, “Odd Clothes and Unorthodox Views: Why MI5 Spied on Orwell for a Decade,” Guardian, September 4, 2007.

  “I always knew he was two-faced”—Ros Wynne-Jones, “Orwell’s Little List Leaves the Left Gasping for More,” Independent on Sunday, July 14, 1996.

  “The man of conscience”—Foreword by Alexander Cockburn in John Reed, Snowball’s Chance (Roof Books, 2002), p. 7.

  “I am a great admirer”—Wynne-Jones.

  “I always disagree”—Orwell letter to Richard Rees, March 3, 1949, CW XX, 3560, p. 52.

  “the use of false information”—Ted Morgan, Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America (Random House, 2004), p. 566.

  “Americanism with its sleeves rolled”—Richard H. Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy (Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1960), p. 12.

  “the chink in our shining armour”—Richard M. Fried, The McCarthy Era in Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 136.

  “Burnham thinks always”—Orwell, “Burnham’s View of the Contemporary World Struggle,” CW XIX, 3204, p. 105.

  “the existence of a vast”—Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Vintage, 2008), p. 14.

  “He abandons Communism intellectually”—Crossman (ed.), pp. 224–25.

  “group-advancement”—Carol Brightman (ed.), Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy, 1949–1975 (Secker & Warburg, 1995), p. 5.

  “In five years”—Swingler and Orwell, “The Right to Free Expression,” CW XVIII, 3090, p. 443.

  “In the USA the phrase ‘Americanism’ ”—Orwell’s Statement on Nineteen Eighty-Four, CW XX, 3636, p. 134.

  “It is difficult, if not impossible”—Quoted in David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 187.

  “He knew that big lies”—James Reston, Deadline: A Memoir (Random House, 1991), p. 215.

  “came out of the McCarthy period”—Ibid., p. 219.

  “Don’t join the book-burners”—Quoted in Morgan, p. 447.

  “Whether or not my ideas on censorship”—Quoted in Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451: 60th Anniversary Edition (Simon & Schuster, 2012), p. 189.

  “true father, mother, and lunatic brother”—Ibid., p. 167.

  “Whereas twenty years ago”—Kingsley Amis, New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (Penguin, 2012), pp. 70–71.

  “A Startling View of Life in 1984”—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Signet Books, 1950).

  “1984 is already on the way out”—Walsh, reprinted in Meyers (ed.), p. 293.

  It has even been claimed—See Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputation, p. 211.

  “if you engaged in any kind”—Raymond Williams, Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review (Verso, 1981), p. 384.

  CHAPTER 11: SO DAMNED SCARED

  “It is difficult to imagine”—Stephen Haseler, The Death of British Democracy: A Study of Britain’s Political Present and Future (London: Paul Elek, 1976), p. 221.

  “On my trips through Russia”—Buckley, p. 252.

  “The sad reminders”—Geoff MacCormack, From Station to Station: Travels With Bowie 1973–1976 (Genesis, 2007), p. 93.

  “You see Roy”—Roy Hollingsworth, “Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes: A Journey with Aladdin,” Melody Maker, May 12, 1973.

  “There is a great sense of crisis”—Benn diaries, December 7, 1973, in Against the Tide: Diaries 1973–76 (Hutchinson, 1989), p. 220.

  “because I deeply believed”—Quoted in Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, Smear!: Wilson and the Secret State (London: 4th Estate, 1991), p. 230.

  “a gradual chilling”—Richard Eder, “Battle of Britain 1974,” New York Times, February 24, 1974.

  “A country rent apart”—Patrick Cosgrave, “Could the Army Take Over?,” Spectator, December 22, 1973.

  “I’m an awful pessimist”—Charles Shaar Murray, “Tight Rope Walker at the Circus,” New Musical Express, August 11, 1973.

  “1974: der Countdown für 1984 hat begonnen”—Merkur, vol. 28, no. 10, 1974.

  “It is a shock to realize”—Richard N. Farmer, The Real World of 1984: A Look at the Foreseeable Future (David McKay Co., Inc., 1973), p. vii.

  “Never before in history”—Jerome Tuccille, Who’s Afraid of 1984? (Arlington House, 1975), p. 3.

  “The term Orwellian”—Burgess, 1985, p. 18.

  “the most famous”—Nicholas von Hoffman, “1984: Here Today, Here Tomorrow?,” Washington Post, June 17, 1974.

  “If he had lived”—Mary McCarthy, “The Writing on the Wall,” New York Review of Books, January 30, 1969.

  “if he does not set down his thoughts”—Sonia Orwell, “Unfair to George,” Nova, June/July 1969.

  Even as the ultra-McCarthyite John Birch Society—see Lucas, The Betrayal of Dissent, p. 39.

  “a fink”—Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler’s Planet (Alison Press, 1984), p. 42.

  “this trash can’t withstand the storms”—Bruce Franklin, “The Teaching of Literature in the Highest Academies of the Empire,” in Louis Kampf and Paul Lauter (eds.), The Politics of Literature: Dissenting Essays on the Teaching of English (Pantheon Books, 1972), p. 116.

  “the common man”—Omnibus: George Orwell: The Road to the Left (BBC, 1971).

  “Oh, where will you be”—Spirit, “1984” (Ode Records, 1969).

  “We don’t want no Big Brother scene”—John Lennon, “Only People,” Mind Games (Apple, 1973).

  “If we don’t get our thing together”—Rare Earth, “Hey Big Brother” (Rare Earth, 1971).

  one of Lee Harvey Oswald’s favourite books—See The Official Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964).

  “it was almost impossible”—The Prisoner File (Channel 4, 1984).

&nb
sp; “the way we’re being made into ciphers”—Warner Troyer interviews Patrick McGoohan for the Ontario Educational Communications Authority, March 1977.

  “the holiday camp, the doodle-bug”—Orwell, Review of The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus, Observer, January 14, 1945, CW XVII, 2604, p. 21.

  “Questions Are a Burden to Others” etc.—The Prisoner (ITV, 1967–68).

  “You still have a choice!”—The Prisoner, “A Change of Mind.”

  “If you insist on living a dream”—The Prisoner, “Dance of the Dead.”

  “Number Two: It doesn’t matter which side runs the Village”—The Prisoner, “The Chimes of Big Ben.”

  “usefully divert the violence of youth” etc.—Privilege (dir. Peter Watkins, 1967).

  “Two superstars of their time”—Quoted in Peter Doggett, The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s (Bodley Head, 2011), p. 254.

  “I could have been Hitler in England”—Cameron Crowe, “Ground Control to Davy Jones,” Rolling Stone, February 12, 1976.

  “You always felt you were in 1984”—Steve Malins, “Duke of Hazard,” Vox, October 1995.

  “For a person who married” and “To be quite honest”—Ben Edmonds, “Bowie Meets the Press: Plastic Man or Godhead of the Seventies?,” Circus, April 27, 1976.

  “a backward look at the sixties and seventies”—Nicholas Pegg, The Complete David Bowie (Titan, 2011), p. 333.

  “I had in my mind” and “staggered through”—Ibid., 68.

  “That was our world”—Paul Du Noyer, “Contact,” Mojo, no. 104, July 2002.

  “not, in my view, a very good novel”—Burgess, p. 91.

  “It is better to have our streets”—Ibid., p. 93.

  “Rats the size of cats”—Orwell, CW VI, p. 54.

  “Oh dress yourself my urchin one”—David Bowie, Diamond Dogs (RCA, 1974).

  “a heavy vibe”—Buckley, p. 185.

  “the warnings from right and left” and “It is very difficult”—Eder, “Battle of Britain, 1974.”

  “conceptualizes the vision”—Quoted in Doggett, p. 211.

  “Power, Nuremburg”—Quoted in Pegg, p. 555.

  “World Assembly building”—Sketch for Hunger City film, 1974, reprinted in David Bowie Is (V&A Publishing, 2013), p. 135.

  “diabolical”—Richard Cromelin, “David Bowie: The Darling of the Avant-Garde,” Phonograph Record, January 1972.