If proof were needed that literary images could play as important a role in the cultural Cold War as those viewed at the cinema, it can be found in the work of the British writer George Orwell. By the time of his death from tuberculosis at 46 years of age in January 1950, Orwell was regarded by many as the finest political writer in English since Jonathan Swift. Two generations later, many would class him as one of the most influential political writers of the twentieth century, and, paradoxically given his early demise, a key player in the East—West information war. Inspired by democratic socialist principles, Orwell's writing was interwoven to an unusual degree in British fiction with a European and internationalist view of history and politics. This feature, together with a characteristic unadorned style (‘good prose is like a window pane’, Orwell claimed), was most clearly illustrated by his two literary masterpieces, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).