Memo on the resignation of Eric Blair

Rushbrook Williams, the Eastern Service Director, praises Orwell's professional integrity as well as his contribution to the BBC, and suggests that he be allowed to forego the obligatory two months' notice if it will help him to continue with his journalism.

Although he resigned in September 1943, Orwell did not actually leave the BBC until November, when he took up the literary editorship of 'Tribune', a left-wing journal founded by Aneurin Bevan with a young Michael Foot as assistant editor. He also began working on the novel 'Animal Farm', a ferocious satire on communist tyranny that was to give him his first real taste of commercial literary success.