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, 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, Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer, Stephen Spender, Stephen Glover, George Orwell, C. E. M. Joad 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, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Dylan Thomas, Diana Witherby, Stuart Hampshire, Geoffrey Grigson, Ben Nicholson, Adrian Stokes, J. D. Bernal C. H. Waddington and John Wisdom.

Orwell's essays

Ayer's essays