By 1949, George Orwell was dying. He didn’t know it, but the next 12 months would be his final stand against totalitarianism. Stuck in the Cranham Sanatorium in the Cotswolds, Orwell, real name Eric Blair, was attempting to get over the ‘white plague’ of tuberculosis, publish 1984, which he had completed by December 1948, and spread the readership of Animal Farm. He would also cooperate with a new secretive organisation, The Information Research Department, and correspond with an agent operating for another unit from the secret world, The Pond. With thanks to The Imperial War Museum, Paul Lashmar, Dorian Lynskey and Mark Stout. Lashmar’s Spin, Spies and the Fourth Estate can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spin-Spies-Fourth-Estate-Lashmar/dp/1474443087/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1614502073&refinements=p_27%3APaul+Lashmar&s=books&sr=1-1 Lynskey’s Ministry of Truth can be found here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ministry-Truth-Biography-George-Orwells/dp/1509890734/ref=sr_1...