George Orwell Studies 8.2

Revealed: Long-Lost Transcript of Orwell BBC Talk

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Darcy Moore dissects a long-lost transcript of a talk given by George Orwell on the BBC in January 1942 in the latest issue of George Orwell Studies.

Although many BBC radio scripts from the 1940s have been lost, there is an almost complete record of Programmes as Broadcast (PasB) which provides an invaluable inventory of what was transmitted. In his article, Darcy Moore tells of how, during a recent six-week research trip to India, he discovered a long-lost transcript of a talk, ‘The meaning of scorched earth’, given by Orwell while employed in the Indian Section of the BBC’s Eastern Service from 1941-1943.

Hassan Akram compares Orwell with Somerset Maugham while Megan Faragher interviews D.J. Taylor at length about his New Life. Wifedom, the controversial biography of Eileen O’Shaughnessy by Anna Funder, is the subject of three pieces: John Rodden examines the claims by Funder and others that a poem by Eileen inspired the themes, title and imagery of Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece while Richard Lance Keeble’s review essay highlights a number of ‘fundamental flaws’. And in his editorial, Keeble cites Glenn Burgess in his excellent George Orwell’s Perverse Humanity: ‘Giving offence was part of the fun. Orwell enjoyed combat with the typewriter; he relished putting his enemies to the verbal sword. He would have had little time for modern sensitivities and our marked (if selective) reluctance to upset others’ (italics in the original). Keeble continues: ‘Indeed, lively Orwellian debate is at the heart of this journal. Orwell Studies will certainly withstand the Wifedom ‘combat’ and continue to offer still more intriguing insights into the life and writings of Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s husband.’

George Orwell Studies, a biannual, peer-reviewed academic journal, which is jointly edited by Tim Crook and Keeble, is entirely independent of The Orwell Society.

• A wonderful new painting of Orwell by Louth-based Lainy Dalzell features on the cover of GOS, Vol. 8, No. 2 which is available from Journals Fulfilment Department, Abramis Academic, ASK House, Northgate Avenue, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, IP32 6BB; telephone 01284 717884; To purchase (and subscribe), see http://www.abramis.co.uk/george-orwell-studies/subs.htm.
  

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