Polemic was a British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" published between 1945 and 1947, which aimed to be a general or non-specialist intellectual periodical.

Edited by the ex-Communist Humphrey Slater

Humphrey Slater

Humphrey Richard "Hugh" Slater was a British author and painter.Brought up in South Africa, he attended the Slade School of Art in the mid-1920s, and exhibited an abstract painting at Lucy Wertheim's gallery, a leading London gallery....

, it was "sympathetic to science, hostile to the intellectual manifestations of romanticism, and markedly anti-Communist. Eight issues were published. The first, published as a book to get round the prohibition of new journals imposed by war-time paper rationing, included contributions by Henry Miller

Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...

, Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

, A. J. Ayer, Stephen Spender

Stephen Spender

Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...

, Stephen Glover, George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

, C. E. M. Joad

C. E. M. Joad

Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad was an English philosopher and broadcasting personality. He is most famous for his appearance on The Brains Trust, an extremely popular BBC Radio wartime discussion programme...

 and Rupert Crawshay-Williams.

Orwell contributed five essays over the life of the magazine and Russell and Ayer contributed four each. Other contributors included Philip Toynbee

Philip Toynbee

Theodore Philip Toynbee was a British writer and communist. He wrote experimental novels, and distinctive verse novels, one of which was an epic called Pantaloon, a work in several volumes, only some of which are published...

, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...

, Diana Witherby, Stuart Hampshire

Stuart Hampshire

Sir Stuart Newton Hampshire was an Oxford University philosopher, literary critic and university administrator. He was one of the antirationalist Oxford thinkers who gave a new direction to moral and political thought in the post-World War II era.Hampshire was educated at Repton School and at...

, Geoffrey Grigson

Geoffrey Grigson

Geoffrey Edward Harvey Grigson was a British writer. He was born in Pelynt, a village near Looe in Cornwall.-Life:...

, Ben Nicholson

Ben Nicholson

Benjamin Lauder "Ben" Nicholson, OM was a British painter of abstract compositions , landscape and still-life.-Background and Training:...

, Adrian Stokes

Adrian Stokes (critic)

Adrian Stokes was a British writer and painter, known principally as an influential art critic. He was also a published poet.- Background :...

, J. D. Bernal

J. D. Bernal

John Desmond Bernal FRS was one of Britain’s best known and most controversial scientists, called "Sage" by his friends, and known for pioneering X-ray crystallography in molecular biology.-Origin and education:His family was Irish, of mixed Italian and Spanish/Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin...

 C. H. Waddington and John Wisdom

John Wisdom

Arthur John Terence Dibben Wisdom was a leading British philosopher considered to be an ordinary language philosopher, a philosopher of mind and a metaphysician. He was influenced by G.E...

.

Orwell's essays

• "Notes on Nationalism
  Notes on Nationalism
  "Notes on Nationalism" is an essay written in May 1945 by George Orwell and published in the first issue of Polemic .In this essay, Orwell discusses the notion of nationalism, and argues that it causes people to disregard common sense and become more ignorant towards factuality...
  
  " (Polemic, No 1 - October 1945 - written in May 1945)
• "The Prevention of Literature
  The Prevention of Literature
  "The Prevention of Literature" is an essay published in 1946 by the English author George Orwell. The essay is a concerned with freedom of thought and expression, particularly in an environment where the prevailing orthodoxy in left-wing intellectual circles is in favour of the communism of the...
  
  " (Polemic, No 2 - January 1946)

• "Second Thoughts on James Burnham
  Second Thoughts on James Burnham
  "Second Thoughts on James Burnham" is an essay first published in 1946 by the English author George Orwell...
  
  " (Polemic, No 3 - May 1946)
• "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels
  Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels
  "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels" is a critical essay published in 1946 by the English author George Orwell. The essay is a review of Gulliver's Travels with a discussion of its author Jonathan Swift...
  
  " (Polemic, No 5 - September–October 1946)
• "Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool
  Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool
  "Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool" is an essay by George Orwell. It was inspired by a critical essay on Shakespeare by Leo Tolstoy, and was first published in Polemic No. 7 ....
  
  " (Polemic, No 7)
• Orwell also contributed an (unsigned) editorial to (Polemic, No 3 - May 1946)