Memo from Orwell to the Eastern Service Director

Orwell discusses the potential effects of broadcasting under his pen-name and how this might affect his credibility to an Indian audience. It is also obvious that, although Orwell realises his job is to broadcast what is essentially propaganda, he refuses to compromise his integrity and wishes to make this clear at the outset.

Unfortunately, none of Orwell's broadcasts survive in the BBC's archives. Wartime shortages and a lack of storage space, together with the fragile nature of the shellac discs used to make recordings, meant that development of the fledgling archive was very much on hold during the war years, although a collection of some 2,000 discs had been established by 1939.