For more than two decades, MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service, kept an eye on George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. They suspected him of being a communist. Hey, the guy dressed like a bohemian. He was practically begging to be put under state surveillance.
A Scotland Yard Special Branch report in January 1942 said the author of 1984 had "advanced communist views".
However, an MI5 officer responded that Orwell "does not hold with the Communist Party nor they with him".
A file from the National Archives also shows MI5 did not object to him having a wartime job at a military base.
Orwell was vetted for the post as a correspondent for the Sunday Observer at Allied Forces Headquarters in North Africa.
'Bohemian dress'
The Special Branch report said: "This man has advanced communist views and several of his Indian friends say that they have often seen him at communist meetings.
"He dresses in a bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours."
The MI5 officer rang the inspector in charge of the sergeant who wrote the report, to question what it meant.
From the call it emerged that Orwell - referred to in the documents by his real name Eric Blair - was thought to be an "unorthodox communist" who did not agree fully with Communist Party views.
The officer from the security service wrote: "I gathered that the good sergeant was rather at a loss as to how he could describe this rather individual line hence the expression 'advanced communist views'.
"It is evident from his recent writings - The Lion and the Unicorn - and his contribution to Gollancz's symposium The Betrayal Of The Left that he does not hold with the Communist Party nor they with him."