I have received confirmation in response to my email above that the Director of Special Collections now has the above letter. I plan on sending our petition, once it has grown to a decent size, so that the Director can see the scale of concern about the prospective loss of Orwell's legacy. So, having bust through a 100 signatures for which I'm very grateful I'd like to urge people to share the petition link as widely as you can to make our request as powerful as possible!

Many thanks for supporting this effort to save a such a significant part of our cultural heritage.