Books, Arts & Manners: Righteous Lies

Orwell: The War Commentaries, edited by W. J. West (Pantheon, 253 pp., $18.95)

Several years ago the amateur scholar, W. J. West, discovered a large cache of Orwell papers in the British Broadcasting Company archives in Reading, England. The literary talks broadcast by Orwell himself during World War II were published as Orwell: The Lost Writings (see NR, Nov. 29, 1985). The War Commentaries, a sequel to the earlier volume, contains 49 weekly news talks to India, which summarize the progress of the war from December 1941, just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to March 1943, when the tide had turned after the great victories at Alamein and Stalingrad. West provides an informative introduction and footnotes, though he does not compare the war commentaries to Orwell’s London letters to the Partisan Review, which were directed to American readers, ran from January 1941 to the summer of 1946, and used some of the same material.

About the Author

Jeffrey Meyers

Mr. Meyers is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the author of John Huston: Courage and Art.

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Orwell: The War Commentaries, edited by W. J. West (Pantheon, 253 pp., $18.95)

Several years ago the amateur scholar, W. J. West, discovered a large cache of Orwell papers in the British Broadcasting Company archives in Reading, England. The literary talks broadcast by Orwell himself during World War II were published as Orwell: The Lost Writings (see NR, Nov. 29, 1985). The War Commentaries, a sequel to the earlier volume, contains 49 weekly news talks to India, which summarize the progress of the war from December 1941, just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to March 1943, when the tide had turned after the great victories at Alamein and Stalingrad. West provides an informative introduction and footnotes, though he does not compare the war commentaries to Orwell’s London letters to the Partisan Review, which were directed to American readers, ran from January 1941 to the summer of 1946, and used some of the same material.