Within the last few decades, in countries like Britain or the United States, the literary intelligentsia has grown large enough to constitute a world in itself. One important result of this is that the opinions which a writer feels frightened of expressing are not those which are disapproved of by society as a whole….In our own day, the English novelist who has most conspicuously defied his contemporaries is Evelyn Waugh. — George Orwell, February 1949