George Orwell: A Life in Letters Read Free Page B

for Orwell Remembered and Remembering Orwell , which are so designated followed by their page numbers.
    Initials such as ILP , sometimes appear with and sometimes without stops after each letter, e.g., ILP and I.L.P. Orwell’s practice is followed. Many are defined when used. Those that are not but which might be unfamiliar to some readers are:
ARP:
Air Raid Precautions
CB:
Commander of the Bath
CBE:
Commander of the Order of the British Empire
CH:
Companion of Honour
CP:
Communist Party
FDC:
Freedom Defence Committee
GPU:
Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenye
(Soviet Secret Police)
IB:
International Brigade
ILP:
Independent Labour Party
IRD:
Information Research Department
KG:
Knight of the Order of the Garter
Kt:
Knight(ed)
LCC:
London County Council
NCCL:
National Council for Civil Liberties
NKVD:
Narodniy Kommissariat Vnutrennykh Dyel
(Soviet Secret Police)
NL:
New Leader
NYK:
Nippon Yusen Kaisha (Japanese Mail Steamer Co.)
OBE:
Officer of the Order of the British Empire
OUP:
Oxford University Press
PAS:
para-amino-salycylic acid
PEN:
International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists
POUM:
Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Revolutionary (anti-Stalinist) Communist Party – under whose aegis Orwell fought in Spain)
PR:
Partisan Review
RAMC:
Royal Army Medical Corps
TUC:
Trades Union Congress
YCL:
Youth Communist League
    It is difficult to give precise equivalents of value with today’s prices because individual items vary considerably. However, a rough approximation can be gained if prices in the 1930s are multiplied by forty; by thirty-five during the war; and by thirty between then and Orwell’s death. In pre-decimal coinage there were 12 pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to £1 – so 240 pence to a £. Sixpence in old coinage = 2½p; one shilling (12 pennies) = 5p; 10 shillings (10/-) = 50p. For the Orwells’ time in Morocco it might be convenient to refer to R.L. Bidwell’s Currency Conversion Tables (1970). He records the French franc as being 165 to the £ (39.8 to the $) in March 1938. In January 1939 he gives 176.5 to the £ (39.8 to the $). Thus, the Orwells’ rent for their cottage – 7s 6d per week – is approximately £1.50 for four weeks in 1930s equivalences and, say, £60 per month at current values. The rent for the villa in Morocco was 550 francs per month, approximately £3.25 then but, say, £130 at today’s values.
    Grateful thanks are due to The Orwell Estate, in particular Richard Blair and Bill Hamilton, and to Gill Furlong, Archivist, and Steven Wright, UCL Special Collections Library, for enabling these letters to be published. I am indebted to my grandson, Tom, for much technical support. The Orwell Estate and the publishers expressed thanks to copyrights holders of letters published in the Complete Works and The Lost Orwell and that gratitude is renewed here. Thanks are also due to those who have allowed letters not previously published, or for which the originals have changed hands, to be reproduced. I am immensely grateful to Myra Jones for her careful proofreading (once again) and to Briony Everroad of Harvill Secker for her courtesy and her splendid support.
    Peter Davison
    An asterisk after a correspondent’s name indicates that that person
    will be found in the Biographical Notes. Cross references to
    other letters are emphasised in bold.

The BBC and the War

    1941 – 1943
    Orwell worked incredibly hard at the BBC. He wrote 105 English-language newsletters for India, and for occupied Malaya and Indonesia. He also wrote the originals for 115 newsletters for translation into Indian languages. We know some were heard in Japanese-occupied territories. A nun in Malaya, Sister Margaret, described to a WRAC officer, Barbara Rigby, how she and the Sisters risked their lives to listen in and walked many miles to give others the news. The nuns, she said, had been cheered by Orwell: ‘we used to bless that good man’. Orwell’s idea of