20 MAY 1995, Page 30

Orwell predicted it

Sir: In Philip Hensher's 29 April review of John Le Carre's new novel, he writes: 'No mere novelist could have been expected to forecast the end of the Cold War . . . and none, I think, actually did.'

George Orwell certainly did so in Animal Farm, first published in 1945, and it is par- ticularly apposite now to reread the account of the reconciliatory dinner in its last chapter, as Presidents Clinton (Pilking- ton) and Yeltsin (Napoleon) mutually con- gratulate each other on the ending of all their past differences at a VE-Day banquet in Moscow.

A.F. Trendall

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