led by Napoleon, take over the farmhouse, while the other animals stay in their pens.
The noble carthorse Boxer is the revolutionary worker, sent off to the knacker’s yard.
Orwell understood the role of propaganda. After the revolution has succeeded, the
slogan ‘All animals are equal’ gains a second clause: ‘but some are more equal than
others’. He was an acute and resolute political intellectual, not a novelist: in his
Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dystopian fiction, Big Brother, the Thought Police and
NON-MODERNISM:THE TWENTIES AND THIRTIES 373Events and publications of 1940–55
Events Publications
1940 Central and north-west Europe, except Britain, 1940 T. S. Eliot, East Coker; Graham Greene, The Power and the
fall to Germany. The Battle of Britain. The London Glory; Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon
Blitz. Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister.
Advance in the Western Desert. Blitz on Coventry
1941 Germany invades the USSR. Japan bombs the 1941 Eliot, The Dry Salvages; Noël Coward, Blithe Spirit
US Fleet in Pearl Harbor. The US joins the Allies.
Income tax is 10s. 0d. in the £
1942 Singapore falls to Japan. The Battles of Midway, 1942 Eliot, Little Gidding
El Alamein, Stalingrad
1943 The Allies land in Sicily. The fall of Mussolini 1943 David Gascoyne, Poems
1944 The Normandy landings. Butler Education Act 1944 Joyce Cary, The Horse’s Mouth; L. P. Hartley, The Shrimp
and the Anemone; Eliot,Four Quartets
1945 The Allies conquer Germany. Atomic bombs are 1945 Sidney Keyes, Collected Poems; Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit
dropped on Japan. War dead total c.55 million. of Love; George Orwell, Animal Farm; Evelyn Waugh,
Clement Attlee (Labour) becomes Prime Minister Brideshead Revisited; Henry Green, Loving; Flora
Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford
1946 Institution of the National Health Service. 1946 Dylan Thomas, Deaths and Entrances; Mervyn Peake, Titus
Labour begins to nationalize industries Groan
1947 Economic crisis. The Marshall Aid Plan. India granted 1947 L. P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda; Malcolm Lowry, Under the
independence; partition creates Pakistan Volcano
1948 Russians blockade Berlin 1948 Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter; W. H. Auden,
Communist coup in Czechoslovakia The Age of Anxiety; Christopher Fry, The Lady’s Not for
Burning; Winston Churchill,The Second World War; F. R.
Leavis,The Great Tradition; Robert Graves,Collected
Poems;Edwin Muir, The Labyrinth; Ezra Pound, The Pisan
Cantos
1949 NATO is created 1949 Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day; Eliot, The Cocktail
Party; Orwell,Nineteen Eighty-Four
1950 Korean War (to 1953) 1950 C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; William
Cooper, Scenes from Provincial Life
1951 Churchill becomes Prime Minister. The Festival of 1951 Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies, Molloy; Greene, The End of
Britain the Affair; Anthony Powell,A Question of Upbringing; C. P.
Snow, The Masters
1952 George VI dies 1952 David Jones, The Anathemata; Waugh, Men at Arms; Dylan
Thomas, Collected Poems
1953 Coronation of Elizabeth II 1953 Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim; Beckett, Watt; Hartley, The Go-
Between
1954 Food rationing ends 1954 William Golding, Lord of the Flies; Dylan Thomas, Under
Milk Wood; Iris Murdoch,Under the Net; J. R. R. Tolkien,
The Fellowship of the Ring; Muir,Autobiography;Terence
Rattigan, Separate Tables
1955 Anthony Eden becomes Prime Minister