2 September 2019
Oh, the heyday of publishing - big desks, lots of cash, martini-soused three-hour lunches, trying to appease your government. That was the world in which TS Eliot, then a director of Faber and FaberClick for Faber and Faber Publishers References listing, was living in 1944, when he rejected George Orwell's Animal Farm for its criticism of Stalin, who was then Britain's wartime ally. "We have no conviction," Eliot wrote to Orwell, "that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the present time." He did, however, say he was "very sorry" to pass on it, as it would likely mean Orwell wouldn't send them his next book - which would end up being a little novel called Nineteen Eighty-Four.
