The Secret War Against the Arts

How MI5 Targeted Left-Wing Writers and Artists, 1936–1956

• Publisher: Pen & Sword History
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781526770325
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

"Reveals the extent of MI5's methodical and implacable investigation into the lives of such people as the writer George Orwell." — UK Historian During the 1930s, the British intelligence agencies became increasingly concerned about Communist influence in the country. They reacted by spying on thousands of ordinary British citizens. Amongst them were many artists and writers who, in tune with "the spirit of the times, " had become sympathetic to left-wing causes, most notably the Spanish Civil War. Telephones were bugged, post opened, homes searched and people encouraged to report suspicious behavior—all reminiscent of the East German Stasi. This book has been written in the light of previously secret files, now available in The National Archives, which indicate the extent of the surveillance and the consequences for those being watched. It focuses on a significant number of writers and artists who were either members of the Communist Party of Great Britain or were suspected of being "fellow travelers." They include: George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Olivia Manning, Storm Jameson, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Townsend Warner, J.B. Priestley, Doris Lessing, Julian Trevelyan, Randall Swingler, Paul Hogarth, Clive Branson, and James Boswell. The Secret War Against the Arts is a unique account of a dramatic period of modern history, from the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War to the Hungarian uprising in 1956, revealing how MI5 was systematic, unrelenting and uncompromising in its pursuit of artists and writers throughout the period, while failing to see the much more disturbing treachery of others—Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess and Kim Philby, for example. "A lively and thought-provoking book." — Penniless Press

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Glossary
• List of Illustrations
• Dramatis Personae
• 1 Hogarth and Branson
• 2 Art and Marx
• 3 ‘A Bastard of a War’
• 4 For the People of Spain
• 5 The Artist Who Sometimes Wears Sandals
• 6 Blacklist
• 7 ‘Are You For Stalin or For Us?’
• 8 Artist and Soldier
• 9 ‘Slimy with Self-Deception’
• 10 ‘One of the More Important Communists’
• 11 Clive in India
• 12 No Peace for MI5
• 13 Doris Lessing Reads Clive Branson
• 14 ‘Afterwards I’ll Paint All Right’
• 15 The Travels of Comrade Hogarth
• 16 The Artists’ Dilemmas
• 17 A Communist Cell at the BBC?
• 18 Listed by Orwell
• 19 Austerity and Restriction
• 20 The Watched One
• 21 ‘Absolute Typical Stephen’
• 22 Paul Hogarth’s Defiant People
• 23 The Failing God?
• 24 The Party is Not Yet Over
• 25 Hogarth and Branson (2)
• 26 Lines from the Burma Front
• 27 Hogarth in China
• 28 Being a Red is Tough
• 29 Hogarth and Lessing go to Africa
• 30 Resignation
• 31 Burma 1944
• 32 Aftermath
• 33 Towards an Ending
• Dramatis Personae: A Retrospective
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography
• Plate section