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“cultural vandalism” indeed! It's ironic then that a nation that pride itself on preserving tradition should allow its national broadcaster the BBC to destroy early archives in the 60s/70s (https://www.quora.com/Why-was-there-a-purge-of-the-BBC-archi...). "Who would want to watch a program twice?" and "Wow, isn't storage expensive?!" Orwell would have turned in his grave.
The honest truth is that the Britain of today isn’t a colonial power anymore, and is rather poor by its relative standards of the past. I feel it’s more concerned with selling its past to tourists for money more than preserving it of late.
Not just to tourists, unfortunately a significant part of our (British) politics is selling our past to voters, as rose-tinted "good old days" emotions at the expense of focussing on how to make the best of the current situation (which, let's face it, despite no longer being as much of a global power as during the empire days were still an extremely privileged country compared to global averages).
Absolutely right!
Whilst I'm not in any way arguing in favour of destroying culturally significant works, you've completely mischaracterised the answer you linked to.

> "Who would want to watch a program twice?"

This isn't even remotely what was said.

The answer makes it clear that it wasn't feasible to air some programs again, due to the fees that must be paid to actors etc., and as such:

> So, if a programme could not be aired again, what was the point in keeping it?

Which is a reasonable line of thinking for the British _Broadcasting_ Corporation.

> "Wow, isn't storage _expensive_?!"

Yes, it was. But the answer makes clear that it wasn't just an issue of storage costs; the _tape_ was extremely expensive, and could be reused. So it was.

> When I worked in the tape library in the late ’60s a one hour reel of tape cost the equivalent of six weeks of my pay. Storage was expensive too.

One final point I would make is that the BBC is publicly funded. It doesn't have unlimited funds, and its primary function is to create content. As the answer clearly states:

> Some samples of programmes were kept as being of interest, but the BBC saw itself as a maker of programmes not a museum.

Controversial take maybe, but who really gives a damn? Filing cabinets that haven't been opened for 50 years? I'm sure people would flock to a museum to see those /s. Researchers obviously weren't that interested. If private collectors are happy to pay large amounts for these things then that seems like the best option, they'll enjoy owning it.

We really don't need the minutia of every decision Orwell made while writing his stories, I'd go so far as to say agonizing over such devalues the work.

Without the originals, however, it's not so difficult, say for a dystopian government, to replace the work entirely with a completely different propaganda attributed to his name. As modern governments do to flip the script on everything from the events of the world wars, the history of the founding of the United States, slavery, and every other politically charged topic hijacked to rally support for one violent or profitable ideal or another.

It's very easy to imagine that tomorrow some government somewhere will be describing the dystopia that George Orwell predicted would occur if people were suddenly allowed to speak freely.

In fact, it's easy to imagine that even the original works themselves can barely serve to protect the original message.

People can say whatever they want. Orwell wasn't God of Moses. If you change his book you have a new book that stands on its own merits.
By original works, do you mean those counterfeits created by enemies of the state to undermine national unity?

The real version is that found in the state’s digital archives.

/s

I love it. Touche'.
Agreed.

Also: the originals are mostly only relevant for their collectible value. Researchers can more easily work off digital scans. No need to buy anything or keep anything together physically, just scan it if you are really that interested.

Are there digital scans though?

Edit:

It seems there's a lot of digitalized materials in UCL online archives, but I would be surprised if all documents were digitalized:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/digital-collections/collection...

I don't know if there are digital scans. But that there aren't proves the OPs point that researchers can't be THAT interested after all, if they didn't even take scans of the documents.
Scans cost money.

We shouldn't let the value of something be determined by the budgets and personal tastes of researchers from a random period in history.

Look at the kind of historical artifacts that provide untold insight into ancient societies. Many of these artifacts only exist today because they were accidentally buried or boarded up in a wall and forgotten about while all others were wiped from the world for whatever reason, be it simply recycling or a more malevolent and systematic purge by motivated individuals.

We don't know what is valuable so we should assume that it is all valuable.

Can you not see a difference between saving nothing and saving every last scrap?
> We don't know what is valuable so we should assume that it is all valuable.

That is a very messy approach to conservation...

That's an interesting perspective how analysis can devalue works of literature. Stripping away the mythos, perhaps.
I'm not aware of any Orwell short stories
In UK we have legislation that protects buildings if they're significant (eg peculiar, famous, old). Perhaps we should have a law requiring digitisation of significant artefacts (at public expense) in order to sell works that may be of historical/cultural significance.

Honestly, I couldn't care less about keeping original documents, but preserving images of those documents seems reasonable.

Same would go for selling artwork or artefacts, offer true opportunity to national museums to retain a digital copy.

Fwiw, I like old artefacts, papers, books, even rusty old filling cabinets, but I don't see value for the country in preserving those things.

Also fwiw, I think the Listed Building laws go a bit far in some cases: preventing people's reasonable enjoyment of their own properties.

The UK is moving rapidly towards 1984, so it only seems fitting that Orwell's letters and various material should just be... memory-holed.

And at the very end of the day, no one will understand why "He loved Big Brother" was not a happy ending.

The publishers are probably embarrassed that they turned down the book because of their pro-Stalinist vision. Holodomor? What Holodomor?
Before this hit the news - how many of the now-angry people had previously demonstrated any real interest in the George Orwell archives? Or had actually worked to preserve any collection of historical documents?

It's real easy to sit on your ass, while bitterly complaining that a whole legion of Somebody Elses is not working 25-hour days, for free, to make the world conform to your whims.

The director of the George Orwell foundation appeared in the article and seemed interested in the archive.
True...but his quoted bit of the article amounts to "why didn't somebody else, on their own time and dime, Do Stuff"? There's no hint that he (or anyone associated with him) had previously cared to even look for such materials. Let alone do a superficial study of them.

The article also notes that the company had previously tried to sell the entire Gollancz collection - vastly more material than just the George Orwell part - to institutional buyers for £1m. None of them were interested. And I don't see any criticism of them for that neglect.

But now, when it's easy for the ass-sitters to score points by screaming about Evil Corporations destroying England's sacred history, there is a huge fuss.

It seems like a GoFundMe should solve this for Orwell, right?
make it so number one
“That nobody had opened those filing cabinets for 50 years was because they were idiots and didn’t understand the archive’s value."

But who is it valuable to? Ultimately a great deal of this is purely interesting to the increasing small number of people who are personally or professionally invested in Orwell. The value here is that the archive could generate a couple of conference keynotes for professors, a new foreword in a reprint, or, at a stretch, a new biography.

There is a very small chance that enough new material, or changes to material, could merit a brand new publication, but ultimately the existing published works stand by themselves and the rest amounts to high brow gossip.

History. It should be a part of our historical and cultural record, not the private playthings for the wealthy.

Whenever something like this comes up, I'm appalled at how little people seem to give a shit about preserving things for the future. In the end, it's all we have to pass down through the ages.

Do you intend to dedicate all your personal communication and financial dealings to historians to study after you death? Or only Orwell's?
When I die, family and close friends will have access to all my data. They can choose what to do with it. Once I'm dead, I'll have no interest in my privacy.

This is also a nonsensical argument and I don't appreciate these bad faith "gotcha" arguments. While my data might be of some historical interest in the sense of understanding the average male in Western Europe in the early 21st century, it isn't nearly of the same significance as that of Orwell. Nobody is going to buy my data and lock it away in a vault. In addition, much of my presence, my "data" is available publicly online in my posts and comments on HN, Reddit and other social media. Orwell didn't post on Reddit, afaik, so somebody buying up Orwell's archive is a much more significant and impactful loss in multiple ways.

But you just wanted to "win" an argument, so I don't know why I'm wasting my time. Have you given any of this any thought at all? Like, really? This really isn't the place for trolling or just making noise. Reddit's more suited for that.

'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.'
If that were true control would never change
If there are only one polity in existence the assertion would be true.
the UK government has a power to act if it wants.
Hats off to the team managing the sale of this archive for getting an article in the Guardian and then here to promoting their work.
The Guardian a reliable outlet for whipping up outrage among the uninformed and easily misled.
why don't they just scan it and release the images as a public archive? are we arguing over old paper now? what will we do with it in a museum? lock it in a glass case so no oily fingers can turn the pages? maybe scholars want to rub their faces all over the book cover at the weekends as a kink?