BBC director-general deems George Orwell too "left-wing" for a statue

GlobalPost

Just how liberal is the liberal media, anyway?

Apparently not as much as you'd think: as the Telegraph reported Tuesday, BBC outgoing director-general Mark Thompson deemed famous writer George Orwell "too left-wing" for a statue outside the iconic news agencies new headquarters. 

Baroness Joan Bakewell, who is backing the Orwell statue scheme, said in a Telegraph piece that BBC director-general Mark Thompson turned down the idea, although a sculptor had already been lined up, and the George Orwell Memorial Trust was fully behind the scheme. 

Read more from GlobalPost: Egypt: Reading Orwell in the dock

According to the Hollywood Reporter, an impressive $94,500 had been raised to go towards the statue. 

The BBC, for its part, told the Telegraph that the statue could not be put outside the piazza outside its headquarters as another art installation was already there, but it was working to "find an appropriate location nearby." 

George Orwell did in fact work at the BBC, as the BBC's own website will tell you. Orwell—whose real name is Eric Blair—worked there from 1941 to 1943, prior to publishing iconic books "1984" and "Animal Farm."

Read more: Banned! The statues they won't let you see - The Independent

The BBC website is mum on why he left his work there. Orwell, in his 1943 resignation letter, was less so.

He wrote: "I am tendering my resignation because for some time past I have been conscious that I was wasting my own time and the public money on doing work that produces no result."

He added that his work producing British propaganda for India was "an almost hopeless task."

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