This volume, with its companian The War Commentaries, re-creates the grim purposeful mood of Britain between Dunkirk and D-Day. The book brings together all the surviving BBC talks written and presented by Orwell during 1942 and 1943. Some of the talks are political: on sabotage, on rationing. Many are literary: adaptations of plays or stories by H.G. Wells, Hans Anderson and Anatole France among others; assessments of writers who influenced Orwell, including Swift, Shaw and Oscar Wilde. A selection of the correspondence from several of the contributors to Orwell's programmes includes letters form E.M. Forster, Mulk Raj Anand, T.S. Eliot and Cyril Connolly.