BEAT THE DEVIL.(anti-communist author George Orwell)(Brief Article)(Editorial)
St. George's List
In our last installment we left the two most notable anti-Communist literary figures in postwar England about to enjoy a country weekend together, with George Orwell visiting Arthur Koestler's cottage in Wales. This was Christmas 1946. Also present were Koestler's second wife, Mamaine, and her twin sister, Celia Kirwan. Orwell took a shine to Celia and indeed proposed to her soon after they were back in London. She turned him down.
The most notorious component of the subsequent transactions was the remission by Orwell to Kirwan of a list of the names of persons on the left whom he deemed security risks, as Communists or fellow travelers. The notoriety stems from the fact that Kirwan worked for the Information Research Department, lodged in the Foreign Office but in fact overseen by the Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6.
When Orwell's secret denunciations surfaced a couple of …
Related articles on HighBeam Research
Daily Mail (London); June 23, 1998
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