Foreword / David Daiches -- Literature and politics -- The political in Britain's two national theatres -- Young writers of the thirties -- Koestler's Koestler -- Hannah Arendt : hedgehog or fox? -- Beatrice Webb as English diarist -- Words -- My LSE -- Reading The observer as a complex text -- On the difficulties of writing biography and of Orwell's in particular -- Reading Nineteen eighty-four as satire -- Animal farm for schools -- Orwell and English socialism -- On the Orwell trail -- Wedekind's Spring awakening -- Horvath's Tales from the Vienna woods -- Pinter's No man's land -- Polly by gaslight -- Edgar catches Jenkins' ear at the Barbican -- Barrault at the Barbican
Summary
This lively collection of essays gives a non-technical, but profound analysis of the essential relationship between politics and literature
