Literary London

Where the books were written, set, sold, printed and buried: from the Globe to the graves, the bookshops to the presses.

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Senate House

The Ministry of Truth: Orwell's model for Minitrue in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In the storyFree

Photo by stevecadman, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Charles Holden's white Portland-stone tower for the University of London, finished in 1937, was the wartime Ministry of Information, where Orwell's wife Eileen worked in the censorship department while he was at the BBC. Winston Smith's Ministry of Truth, 'an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete', is this building, and its art deco lobbies and library are much used by films that need a totalitarian frontage. Graham Greene wrote propaganda in it, and Evelyn Waugh put it in Put Out More Flags.

Where
Malet Street, WC1E 7HU
Nearest station
Russell Square · 5 min walk

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