He hated his time with the police force, hated the British empire, and called imperialism “an evil thing.”

Incredibly, the man once accused of communist tendencies and the creator of Big Brother, was by 1949 surreptitiously working for British intelligence. He drew up a list of names of crypto-communists for Britain’s Foreign Office Information Research Department, the spies who led the UK propaganda war.

Orwell’s contact was Celia Kirwan, a former flame who visited the author while he battled tuberculosis at a sanatorium in England. Orwell had proposed to her years earlier but they were simply friends at that point - friends in high places. During her visit, Celia and Orwell discussed the secretive projects the IRD was doing “in great confidence, and he was delighted to learn of them, and expressed his wholehearted and enthusiastic approval of our aims,” according to Britain’s National Archives and Foreign Office records.

Orwell listed the names of suspected communists who might betray Britain if they were hired to work as writers in the propaganda unit. In his now-famous letter dated April 6, 1949, Orwell writes: “I could also, if it is of value, give you a list of crypto-communists, fellow-travelers or inclined that way and should not be trusted as propagandists.”

Orwell wanted his list to be ‘strictly confidential’. It includes dozens of literary luminaries of the ‘40s including J. B. Priestley, the novelist and playwright, and Manchester Guardian industrial correspondent John Anderson, described by Orwell as: "Probably sympathizer only. Good reporter. Stupid."

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Orwell collapsed with tuberculosis after writing the first draft of Nineteen Eighty-Four and typed the second version of his novel while recovering in bed. He collapsed again when he had finished and died on January 21, 1950. The CIA, US Army, and British spies began courting his young widow, his second wife Celia, almost immediately hoping to buy the firm rights to Animal Farm. The CIA closed the deal with a promise of cash and an introduction to Hollywood movie star Clarke Gable. The Brits settled for the rights to turn Animal Farm into a comic strip.