Eric Arthur Blair, forever known by his nom de plume of George Orwell, was born in India in 1903. During his relatively short life, he died of tuberculosis in 1950 aged 46, Orwell was a poet, novelist, journalist and social critic. His best known works include the allegorical Animal Farm and the dystopian and prescient Nineteen Eighty-Four. I enjoyed both of these works but actually preferred Orwell’s first full length book, the memoir ‘tale of two cities’, ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ written in 1933. Orwell had been a policeman in Burma (modern day Myanmar) and moved to London in 1927. His investigative walking or ‘tramping’ around London formed the foundations for this book and appealed to my own travel instincts. 70 years on Orwell’s influence in popular culture is as great as ever as ‘Orwellian’, ‘Big Brother’, ‘Thought Police’, ‘Room 101’, ‘Newspeak’ and ‘Thought crime’ amongst others remain part of the modern day lexicon.

Ranked by The Times of London as the ‘second greatest British writer since 1945’, Orwell was not rejected very often. However in 1946 he had written a piece for the British Council entitled ‘British Cookery’. The council, responsible for promoting British relations overseas, told Orwell it would be “unwise to publish it for the continental reader”. That cultural myopia is laughable in these inter-connected modern times and the British Council editor conceded that the essay was ‘excellent’ but with “one or two minor criticisms”. Orwell himself described the British diet as “a simple, rather heavy, perhaps slightly barbarous diet” where “hot drinks are acceptable at most hours of the day”. The council editor spiked the story as Orwell’s recipe for orange marmalade contained “too much sugar and water”.

Orwell, who was shot in the throat whilst fighting on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War in 1937, considered breakfast as “not a snack but a serious meal” and “at the end of the meal comes bread, or toast, with orange marmalade.”

Other ‘Orwellian’ insights into the very limited and bland British culinary tastes of the time include “Tea is the preferred drink with which to wash breakfast down, since coffee in Britain is almost always nasty”. And “The British are great eaters of pickles,” but “as for vegetables, it must be admitted they seldom get the treatment they deserve” as “Cabbage is simply boiled – a method which renders it almost uneatable – while cauliflowers, leeks and marrows are usually smothered in a tasteless white sauce.”

Luckily, Orwell considered high tea in 1940s Britain as consisting of a variety of savoury and sweet dishes, but “no tea would be considered a good one if it did not include at least one kind of cake”.

GEORGE ORWELL’S RECIPE FOR ORANGE MARMALADE;

Ingredients:

• 2 seville oranges
• 2 sweet oranges
• 2 lemons
• 8lbs (3.6kg) of preserving sugar
• 8 pints (4.5 litres) of water

Method. Wash and dry the fruit. Halve them and squeeze out the juice. Remove some of the pith, then shred the fruit finely. Tie the pips in a muslin bag.

Put the strained juice, rind and pips into the water and soak for 48 hours. Place in a large pan and simmer for an hour and a half until the rind is tender. Leave to stand overnight, then add the sugar and let it dissolve before bringing to the boil.

Boil rapidly until a little of the mixture will set into a jelly when placed on a cold plate. Pour into jars which have been heated beforehand and cover with paper covers.

In 2018, 72 years after Orwell’s essay was rejected, the British Council apologized for the snub.

Alasdair Donaldson, its senior policy analyst, said: “It seems that the organisation in those days was somewhat po-faced and risk-averse, and was anxious to avoid producing an essay about food in the aftermath of the hungry winter of 1945.”

He added: “Over 70 years later, the British Council is delighted to make amends for its slight on perhaps the UK’s greatest political writer of the 20th century, by reproducing the original essay in full – along with the unfortunate rejection letter.”