‘Two Wasted Years’: Orwell at the BBC

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13785/two_wasted_years_orwell_at_the_bbc/


George Orwell's struggle for mental freedom at the BBC became the basis of the central conflict in "1984."

A few weeks ago, the Telegraph reported that BBC director Mark Thompson had vetoed a proposed statue of George Orwell on the grounds that the writer was “too left-wing.”

There are surely better reasons not to adorn BBC headquarters with Orwell's image.

Orwell is not, I think, a figure suited to being cast in bronze. He was naturally suspicious of “great men,” averse to hero-worship, and believed that “saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.”

Besides which, Orwell's feelings about his former employer were not always friendly. Though he publicly insisted that “in my experience the BBC is relatively truthful,” he privately described the organization as “a mixture of whoreshop and lunatic asylum.”