George Orwell

Society

Pamphlet literature

• 19 June 2008

By 1943, George Orwell had become an infrequent contributor to the New Statesman. A quarrel with the magazine's editor, Kingsley Martin, over his anti-Stalinist but left-wing stance during the Spanish Civil War had led to the suppression of some of his articles. In this rare appearance in the Statesman's pages, Orwell argued that the time was ripe for the flowering of political pamphlets, but although many were being published most were little more than rubbish.