Orwell despised the editor of the New Statesman, Kingsley Martin, because he refused to publish any of Orwell's 1937 Spanish Civil War articles exposing the role of Stalin's Communists in betraying the Spanish people by imprisoning and murdering the true anti-Fascist forces. Orwell and his wife were on Stalin's enemy list and they were lucky to get out of Spain alive.

Malcolm Muggeridge, a fellow journalist and friend of Orwell, tells the story of the time the two of them were having dinner in a Soho restaurant when Kingsley Martin walked in and sat where Orwell could see him. So Orwell asked Muggeridge to change seats with him so that he didn't have to look at "that corrupt face" all through the meal.

ORWELL'S PUBS & RESTAURANTS

Kingsley Martin thought Orwell was talking about him when he wrote an As I Please column lambasting Communists in the publishing industry:

But in all fairness Orwell could just as easily have been talking about his publisher Victor Gollanz who had turned down Homage to Catalonia AND Animal Farm because he considered them too anti-Communist.

In any event, Orwell's dislike of Kingsley Martin didn't prevent him from writing book reviews for the New Statesman over the years of his journalistic career, which was only interrupted by his writing of books and novels.

I have a book entitled UNWELCOME GUERRILLA which contains all of the book reviews Orwell wrote for the New Statesman and all of the book reviews the New Statesman wrote on Orwell's books.

Also in that book is Orwell's obituary written by V.S. Pritchett, a long-time journalist for the New Statesman. It is considered the BEST Orwell obituary and coined many phrases describing Orwell including "wintry conscience of a generation" and "Don Quixote" and conferred on him a kind of sainthood. ~ Jackie Jura

ORWELL DEFINITIVE OBITUARY and ORWELL'S CRYSTAL SPIRIT POEM

AMERICANS' VIETNAM CONFUSION

16.Ministry of Truth and ORWELL'S PUBLISHING PROBLEMS