Norman Bissell

DID you know that most freelance writers and artists haven’t received a penny from the various support schemes over the last four months of the Covid-19 lockdown? Since they are not employees they haven’t been furloughed, and because their earnings fall under the thresholds.

GEORGE Orwell is the most influential writer of all time. That was the view expressed by John Rodden, a renowned author on the subject of Orwell and the post-Orwell world, at a recent two-day international conference which I attended at University College London.