The War Commentaries are the lost texts of Orwell's radio commentaries on World War II: his week-by-week analysis of the crucial years of the war, offering a unique look at the propaganda batties waged by both sides.
The broadcasts were transmitted by the BBC weekly from December 1941, immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to February 1943, when the tide had finally turned in the Allies' favor. They offer a gripping account of the most critical portion of the war. In The War Commentaries one finds the germ of many of Orwell's later works, including Nineteen Eighty-Four, along with the spirit of a great writer whose pursuit of the truth was inhibited only by the censor. The Schocken edition presents Orwell's texts in full, restoring passages deleted by wartime censors. Necessary background details, including many facts that were not known to Orwell and his colleagues at the time, are supplied by the editor.
The War Commentaries are unsurpassed as a vivid, timely account of one of the most important periods in the history of the world as seen and documented by a master of English prose.