Orwell's Last Stand: A Cold War Documentary

By 1949, George Orwell was dying. He didn’t know it, but the next 12 months would be his final stand against totalitarianism. Stuck in the Cranham Sanatorium in the Cotswolds, Orwell, real name Eric Blair, was attempting to get over the ‘white plague’ of tuberculosis, publish 1984, which he had completed by December 1948, and spread the readership of Animal Farm. He would also cooperate with a new secretive organisation, The Information Research Department, and correspond with an agent operating for another unit from the secret world, The Pond. 

With thanks to The Imperial War Museum, Paul Lashmar, Dorian Lynskey and Mark Stout. 

Lashmar’s Spin, Spies and the Fourth Estate can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spin-Spies-Fourth-Estate-Lashmar/dp/1474443087/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1614502073&refinements=p_27%3APaul+Lashmar&s=books&sr=1-1

Lynskey’s Ministry of Truth can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ministry-Truth-Biography-George-Orwells/dp/1509890734/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1RBKVCZKRPG2K&dchild=1&keywords=dorian+lynskey&qid=1614502154&s=books&sprefix=Dorian+Lynskey%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1

Music credit: 

Scott Buckley’s Machina, Beautiful Oblivion and Ascension licenced under CC-BY 4.0

https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/

Audio credits: 

Emma Topping, Ash Steel, Norman Reddaway (interviewed by ©The Imperial War Museum) and Christopher Hitchens reading Robert Conquest’s George Orwell (1969) poem 

About the Tech, Power and Media Podcast 

The Tech, Power and Media podcast looks at the intersection and relationships between technology, media and the power it creates, limits and changes. Hosted by Ian Silvera, editor of Future News https://www.news-future.com​​​

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Research Resources

The National Archives’ FO 1110 seriesHistory Notes from The Foreign and Commonwealth OfficeReport of The Bloody Sunday InquiryBritain's Secret Propaganda War by Paul Lashmar and James OliverIn Celia’s Office by Robert Conquest for The Hoover InstituteOur Job Is To Make Life Worth Living (Complete Works S.) edited by Peter DavisonThe Orwell Archive at University College LondonThe Centre for Conflict, Security and Terrorism at The University of NottinghamTime To Explain by Christopher MayhewFree Agent: The Unseen War 1941–1991 by Brian CrozierA Spy Among Friends by Ben MacintyreThe British Diplomatic Oral History Programme at Churchill College, Cambridge UniversityThe Oral History Programme at the Imperial War Museum, LondonThe Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training at the Library of CongressThe CIA Reading RoomThe Pond: Running Agents for State, War, and the CIA by Mark StoutThe House of Commons’ Hansard Service for 13 January 1981The Margaret Thatcher Foundation Archive