and Major-General Fuller, the first of whom teaches that the defence is stronger than the attack, and the second that the attack is stronger than the defence. This contradiction has not prevented both of them from being accepted as authorities by the same public. The secret reason for their vogue in left-wing circles is that both of them are at odds with the War Office’ (‘Notes on Nationalism’, 1945, XVII, p. 143).
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1989–1976), Soviet advocate of Lamarckism (roughly, the ability in nature to develop acquired characteristics). His views were supported by Stalin. They dominated Soviet biology from the 1930s leading to the elimination of rival, and far sounder, biologists. In 1948 the Central Committee of the Soviet Union decreed that ‘Lysenkoism’ was correct. Lysenko and his theories were totally discredited following the fall of Khrushchev. The penultimate book Orwell read in 1949 was Julian Huxley’s Soviet Genetics and World Science: Lysenko and the Meaning of Heredity (1949) . Orwell was interested in Lysenko to the last. He pasted a cutting from the News Chronicle for 16 December 1949 into his Last Literary Notebook which quoted Lysenko as maintaining that ‘Wheat can become Rye’ (XX, 3725, p. 214).
Dwight Macdonald (1906–82), libertarian critic, pamphleteer, and scholar. He was an associate editor of Partisan Review and later founded Politics of which he was editor 1944–49 and to which Orwell contributed, November 1944 and September 1946.
Sally McEwan (?–1987) was Orwell’s secretary when he was literary editor of Tribune . She stayed at Barnhill with her daughter in 1946 and Michael Shelden records that over forty years later she still had happy memories of her time there (Shelden, p. 449).
John McNair (1887–1968), a Tynesider and indefatigable worker for socialism all his life. He left school when he was twelve, ran into trouble with employers because of his left-wing views, and went to France to find work. He stayed there for twenty-five years, becoming a leather merchant, founding a football club with eight teams, and lecturing on English poets at the Sorbonne. He returned to England in 1936, rejoined the ILP and was its General Secretary, 1939–55. He was the first British worker to go to Spain and was the ILP representative in Barcelona.
Jessica Marshall ( née Browne) lived at Byfleet, Surrey. She heard Orwell give a lecture and thereafter read all he wrote. They seem to have had no personal contact. It is typical of Orwell’s generous spirit that, even though he was ill, he took the trouble to write to her at such length.
Michael Meyer ( 1921–2000), author and translator (most notably of Ibsen and Strindberg). In 1943 he wrote what he later described as a ‘timid letter’ to Orwell and received an invitation to lunch (see XV, p. 65). They met and became good friends. Meyer describes Orwell in Remembering Orwell , pp. 132–7.
Henry Miller (1891–1980), American author who lived in Paris from 1930–39. His fictionalised autobiographies, such as Tropic of Cancer (1934), and Tropic of Capricorn ( 1938), were banned in the USA until 1961 for their explicit treatment of sex. For Orwell’s essay on Miller, see ‘Inside the Whale’ (XII, pp. 86–115).
Leonard Moore (?–1959), of Christy & Moore, became Orwell’s literary agent in 1932 at the suggestion of Mabel Fierz. He succeeded in placing Down and Out in Paris and London and was throughout Orwell’s life a patient and skilful supporter of Orwell and his work.
Raymond Mortimer, CBE (1895–1980), critic and literary editor of the New Statesman and Nation and one of the best that paper had.
John Middleton Murry (1889–1957) was nominally the editor of The Adelphi (which he founded in June 1923) for some fourteen years but much of the editing was undertaken by Max Plowman and Sir Richard Rees. Despite his unorthodox Marxism, deeply entrenched pacifism, and later entry to the church, he and Orwell
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1989–1976), Soviet advocate of Lamarckism (roughly, the ability in nature to develop acquired characteristics). His views were supported by Stalin. They dominated Soviet biology from the 1930s leading to the elimination of rival, and far sounder, biologists. In 1948 the Central Committee of the Soviet Union decreed that ‘Lysenkoism’ was correct. Lysenko and his theories were totally discredited following the fall of Khrushchev. The penultimate book Orwell read in 1949 was Julian Huxley’s Soviet Genetics and World Science: Lysenko and the Meaning of Heredity (1949) . Orwell was interested in Lysenko to the last. He pasted a cutting from the News Chronicle for 16 December 1949 into his Last Literary Notebook which quoted Lysenko as maintaining that ‘Wheat can become Rye’ (XX, 3725, p. 214).
Dwight Macdonald (1906–82), libertarian critic, pamphleteer, and scholar. He was an associate editor of Partisan Review and later founded Politics of which he was editor 1944–49 and to which Orwell contributed, November 1944 and September 1946.
Sally McEwan (?–1987) was Orwell’s secretary when he was literary editor of Tribune . She stayed at Barnhill with her daughter in 1946 and Michael Shelden records that over forty years later she still had happy memories of her time there (Shelden, p. 449).
John McNair (1887–1968), a Tynesider and indefatigable worker for socialism all his life. He left school when he was twelve, ran into trouble with employers because of his left-wing views, and went to France to find work. He stayed there for twenty-five years, becoming a leather merchant, founding a football club with eight teams, and lecturing on English poets at the Sorbonne. He returned to England in 1936, rejoined the ILP and was its General Secretary, 1939–55. He was the first British worker to go to Spain and was the ILP representative in Barcelona.
Jessica Marshall ( née Browne) lived at Byfleet, Surrey. She heard Orwell give a lecture and thereafter read all he wrote. They seem to have had no personal contact. It is typical of Orwell’s generous spirit that, even though he was ill, he took the trouble to write to her at such length.
Michael Meyer ( 1921–2000), author and translator (most notably of Ibsen and Strindberg). In 1943 he wrote what he later described as a ‘timid letter’ to Orwell and received an invitation to lunch (see XV, p. 65). They met and became good friends. Meyer describes Orwell in Remembering Orwell , pp. 132–7.
Henry Miller (1891–1980), American author who lived in Paris from 1930–39. His fictionalised autobiographies, such as Tropic of Cancer (1934), and Tropic of Capricorn ( 1938), were banned in the USA until 1961 for their explicit treatment of sex. For Orwell’s essay on Miller, see ‘Inside the Whale’ (XII, pp. 86–115).
Leonard Moore (?–1959), of Christy & Moore, became Orwell’s literary agent in 1932 at the suggestion of Mabel Fierz. He succeeded in placing Down and Out in Paris and London and was throughout Orwell’s life a patient and skilful supporter of Orwell and his work.
Raymond Mortimer, CBE (1895–1980), critic and literary editor of the New Statesman and Nation and one of the best that paper had.
John Middleton Murry (1889–1957) was nominally the editor of The Adelphi (which he founded in June 1923) for some fourteen years but much of the editing was undertaken by Max Plowman and Sir Richard Rees. Despite his unorthodox Marxism, deeply entrenched pacifism, and later entry to the church, he and Orwell
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