E. M. Forster, Richie Calder, Cedric Dover...
“Talking to India”

Edited by George Orwell.

E. M. Forster, Richie Calder, Cedric Dover, Hsiao Ch'ien and others: A Selection of English Language Broadcasts to India. Edited and with an Introduction by George Orwell.

By Daniel J. Leab:

Despite his continuing health problems, Orwell managed during 1942-43 a prodigious output. In addition to his time-consuming duties at the BBC (which included writing 15-minute commentaries, reading many of them over the air, and producing booklets and courses), he was a regular contributor of essays and reviews to the Partisan Review, the New Statesman, Tribune, and other weekly newspapers. He also contributed to (among other publications) the Observer, Poetry London, New Road (a small Socialist annual), and the Nation (the American weekly). Talking to India, wrote Orwell, was “a representative selection... with a literary bias” of the programs broadcast to India. The approximately 2,000 copies printed of the book were sold out by 1945. Orwell's contribution, beyond the Introduction, was “The Rediscovery of Europe: Literature Between the Wars,” broadcast in March 1942 and published that same month in the Listener (the BBC magazine).