"Dylan Thomas was the one big name [in the literary circles Burgess frequented in wartime London], but George Orwell, known chiefly as a competent journalist who had had his larynx weakened by a Spanish bullet, sometimes appeared in the Wheatsheaf or Fitzroy Tavern to down a silent half. He stood on the edge of a company of film workers one evening to listen distractedly to Gilbert Wood, a petulant painter mentioned scornfully, though not by name, in Maclaren-Ross’s Memoirs. Wood ... was terrified even by the mention of rats and, inevitably in his presence, rats would sooner or later gnaw into the conversation. ... I believe Orwell picked up the idea of Winston Smith’s phobia from Gilbert Wood. When, much later, I told Wood that I had eaten stewed rat, he vomited."