David Astor, the aristocratic Observer editor who was introduced to Orwell by Cyril Connolly, remembered Orwell toying with the idea of re-editing fragments of Churchill’s speeches to make it sound as if he were declaring peace, just to show how easy it was to manipulate recordings. “I think he thought that you could use propaganda machines to invent anything and to make people make speeches they hadn’t ever made,” said Astor.
