More than 70 years after the event, the British Council has apologised to George Orwell for commissioning and then rejecting an essay about British food.
The author of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm was, the body has revealed, commissioned to write British Cookery in 1946, as part of the organisation's efforts to promote British culture overseas. But a discovery in the British Council's archives has revealed that after commissioning the essay, it declined to publish it, telling Orwell that it was problematic to write about food in a time of strict rationing.
Read Full Article »