A new book from Thomas E Ricks explores the similarities between two 20th century mavericks.
In his essay “The Prevention of Literature”, published in 1946, George Orwell describes attending a meeting of PEN, the club founded in 1921 to defend the interests of writers, on the tercentenary of Milton’s Areopagitica, in which the poet celebrates freedom of expression. There were four speakers on the platform. One discussed freedom of the press but only in relation to India, another nervously advanced the proposition that freedom might be a good thing, the third attacked the laws banning obscenity in literature …read more
Source: New Statesman
