George Orwell is a major figure in twentieth-century literature. During his lifetime he published ten books and two collections of essays. Orwell seldom "reported" and he never took a line other than the one himself felt at the moment of writing. His essays are certainly some of the greatest in that most difficult genre. His widow and her co-editor have collected everything Orwell would have considered an essay, all the journalism that was not purely ephemeral, and those letters which contribute to our understanding of his life and writing. The material is arranged chronologically, and gives a continuous picture of Orwell's life as well as his work. -- From publisher's description.

Scholars in Media Studies increasingly take the view that our understanding of the history of the discipline is deeply inadequate. It is now widely recognised that a large number of important media analysts have simply been omitted from the standard histories. This book aims to fill in some of the gaps by examining the work of eleven neglected writers, each of whom has made a seminal contribution to the analysis of the media but whose work rarely appears in student textbooks, anthologies and readers. In keeping with the interdisciplinary ambitions of contemporary Media Studies, the selected thinkers are drawn from a wide range of historical periods and intellectual backgrounds. There are chapters on sociologists, creative writers, cultural theorists, art critics, journalists and even ancient Greek philosophers. The aims of the book are by no means purely antiquarian. The contributors believe that a revival of interest in the work of their chosen writers can go a long way towards revitalising Media Studies, especially by (1) drawing attention to a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches which have yet to be adequately exploited, (2) suggesting new areas of research, and (3) transforming our understanding of the historical development of Media Studies.

Committed Styles offers a new understanding of the politicized literature of the 1930s and its relationship to modernism. It reclaims a central body of literary and critical works for modernist studies, offering in-depth readings of texts by T.S. Eliot and I.A. Richards, as well as by key left-wing authors including William Empson, David Gascoyne, Charles Madge, Humphrey Jennings, and Edward Upward. Building on substantial new archival research, Benjamin Kohlmann explores the deep tensions between modernist experimentation and political vision that lie at the heart of these works. Taking as its focus the work of these writers, the book argues that the close interactions between literary production, critical reflection, and political activism in the decade shaped the influential view of modernism as fundamentally apolitical. Intervening in debates about the long life of modernism, it contends that we need to take seriously the anti-modernist impulse of 1930s left-wing literature even when attention is paid to the formal complexity of these 'committed' works. The tonal ambiguities which run through the politicised literature of the 1930s thus effect not a disengagement from but a more thorough immersion in the profoundly conflicted political commitments of the decade. At the same time, the study shows that debates about the politics of writing in the 1930s continue to inform current debates about the relationship between literature and political commitment.

Shortly after it was founded in 1947, the CIA launched a secret effort to win the Cold War allegiance of the British left. Hugh Wilford traces the story of this campaign from its origins in Washington DC to its impact on Labour Party politicians, trade unionists, and Bloomsbury intellectuals

A Question of Honor is the gripping, little-known story of the refugee Polish pilots who joined the RAF and played an essential role in saving Britain from the Nazis, only to be betrayed by the Allies after the war. After Poland fell to the Nazis, thousands of Polish pilots, soldiers, and sailors escaped to England. Devoted to liberating their homeland, some would form the RAF’s 303 squadron, known as the Kosciuszko Squadron, after the elite unit in which many had flown back home. Their thrilling exploits and fearless flying made them celebrities in Britain, where they were “adopted” by socialites and seduced by countless women, even as they yearned for news from home. During the Battle of Britain, they downed more German aircraft than any other squadron, but in a stunning twist at the war’s end, the Allies rewarded their valor by abandoning Poland to Joseph Stalin. This moving, fascinating book uncovers a crucial forgotten chapter in World War II–and Polish–history.

Alongside his reputation as an author, H.G. Wells is also remembered as a leading political commentator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Building Cosmopolis presents the worldview of Wells as developed between his student days at the Normal School of Science (1884-1887) and his death in 1946. During this time, Wells developed a unique political philosophy, grounded on the one hand in the theory of 'Ethical Evolution' as propounded by his professor, T.H. Huxley, and on the other in late Victorian socialism. From this basis Wells developed a worldview which rejected class struggle and nationalism and embraced global co-operation for the maintenance of peace and the advancement of the human species in a world society. Although committed to the idea of a world state, Wells became more antagonistic towards the nation state as a political unit during the carnage of the First World War. He began moving away from the position of an internationalist to one of a cosmopolitan in 1916, and throughout the inter-war period he advanced the notion of regional and, ultimately, functional world government to a greater and greater extent. Wells first demonstrated a functionalist society in Men Like Gods (1923) and further elaborated this system of government in most of his works, both fictional and non-fictional, throughout the rest of his life. Following an examination of the development of his political thought from inception to fruition, this study argues that Wells's political thoughts rank him alongside David Mitrany as one of the two founders of the functionalist school of international relations, an acknowledgement hitherto denied to Wells by scholars of world-government theory.