In 1941, Orwell wrote in his diary: “One could not have a better example of the moral and emotional shallowness of our time, than the fact that we are now all… pro Stalin. This disgusting murderer is temporarily on our side, and so the purges, etc., are suddenly forgotten.”

While literary editor of Tribune, a literary magazine, Orwell began writing Animal Farm – a farmyard allegory of Josef Stalin’s Soviet regime.

It was initially rejected by publishers. The poet T.S. Eliot, working as an editor at Faber & Faber, felt it was a needless attack on the Soviets. They were after all in alliance with Britain and America and had just helped defeat the Nazis.

Secker & Warburg finally published Animal Farm in August 1945. It was a success in Britain and America, and brought Orwell fame.

Orwell’s allegory of the Bolshevik Revolution and the early years of Stalinism entertainingly reveals the moral failure of communism, showing up the naivety of those who still thought Stalinist Russia was a noble experiment.

The fact that Orwell considered himself a ‘democratic socialist’ gave his judgment on the regime extra force. He was never against socialism itself, but fascism and totalitarianism.

Orwell could have expressed his views in a factual way, as he did with Down and Out in Paris and London or The Road to Wigan Pier (both of which exposed the lot of the working classes).

But the timeless storyline of Animal Farm meant it appealed to millions. The paperback Signet edition alone has sold 20 million copies, and the book is still standard reading for final year English students.

The book begins with Old Major, a pig, trying to wake up the other animals to their condition: “Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers… All animals are equal.”

Farmer Jones is the enemy, and only by banding together can they overthrow him.