George Orwell, the author who coined the phrase "Big Brother is watching you", was himself the subject of intense surveillance by the secret services, documents released on Tuesday disclose.

The creator of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which envisages a day when every person's movements are scrutinised by a totalitarian state, was closely monitored amid concerns that he was a prominent member of the communist movement....

Files released by the National Archives disclose that in 1942, Scotland Yard was paying close attention to Orwell, who was then working at the BBC.