BooksBarbecue
Back Orwell in Spain Save as PDF
Chapters (82)
  1. Cover
  2. Brand Page
  3. Orwell in Spain
  4. Orwell in Spain
  5. Introduction
  6. Editorial Note
  7. Acknowledgements
  8. Orwell’s Journey to Spain, December 1936
  9. Extract from ‘As I Please’, 42 [The Journey to Spain]
  10. Jennie Lee to Margaret M. Goalby, 23 June 1950: Orwell’s Arrival in Barcelona
  11. Orwell in Spain, December 1936
  12. Eileen Blair to Leonard Moore
  13. ‘British Author with the Militia’
  14. Eileen Blair to her mother
  15. To Eileen Blair
  16. Extract from letter from Eileen Blair to Leonard Moore
  17. Eileen Blair to Dr Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy
  18. Extract from letter to Victor Gollancz
  19. Orwell’s Wound
  20. To Cyril Connolly
  21. Eileen Blair to Dr Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy
  22. Escape from Spain
  23. BARCELONA 13TH JULY, 1937
  24. Charles Doran
  25. Homage to Catalonia
  26. X
  27. ‘Spilling the Spanish Beans’
  28. Eileen Blair to John McNair
  29. George Kopp to Dr Laurence O’Shaughnessy
  30. Translation of letter written in Spanish by George Kopp to Lieutenant-Colonel Burillo,7 Chief of Police, Barcelona
  31. George Kopp to Eileen Blair
  32. Review of The Spanish Cockpit by Franz Borkenau; Volunteer in Spain by John Sommerfield
  33. To Rayner Heppenstall
  34. ‘Eye-Witness in Barcelona’
  35. Abstracts of Reports on the Spanish Civil War in the Daily Worker and News Chronicle, 1936–7
  36. To Amy Charlesworth
  37. To Charles Doran
  38. Unpublished Response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War
  39. To Geoffrey Gorer
  40. Review of Red Spanish Notebook by Mary Low and Juan Brea; Heroes of the Alcazar by R. Timmermans; Spanish Circus by Martin Armstrong
  41. To H. N. Brailsford
  42. Review of Storm Over Spain by Mairin Mitchell; Spanish Rehearsal by Arnold Lunn; Catalonia Infelix by E. Allison Peers; Wars of Ideas in Spain by Josée Castillejo; Invertebrate Spain by Josée Ortega y Gasset
  43. H. N. Brailsford to Orwell
  44. To H. N. Brailsford
  45. Review of The Tree of Gernika by G. L. Steer; Spanish Testament by Arthur Koestler
  46. To the Editor, Time and Tide
  47. To Raymond Mortimer
  48. To Stephen Spender
  49. To Geoffrey Gorer
  50. ‘Notes* on the Spanish Militias
  51. To the Editor, The Times Literary Supplement
  52. Sir Richard Rees to Orwell
  53. To the Editor, The Listener
  54. Review of Spain’s Ordeal1 by Robert Sencourt; Franco’s Rule [anonymous]
  55. Review of The Civil War in Spain by Frank Jellinek1
  56. Review of Searchlight on Spain by the Duchess of Atholl1
  57. To the Editor, Manchester Guardian
  58. To Yvonne Davet
  59. To Raymond Postgate
  60. Orwell made two copies of this summary of the article in La Flèche of 14 October 1938, by L.-P. Foucaud.
  61. Review of The Church in Spain, 1737-1937 by E. Allison Peers; Crusade in Spain by Eoin O’Dujfy1
  62. To Frank Jellinek
  63. ‘Release of George Kopp’
  64. ‘Caesarean Section in Spain
  65. To Yvonne Davet
  66. Review of Hotel in Flight by Nancy Johnstone
  67. Review of The Last Days of Madrid by S. Casado, translated by Rupert Croft-Cooke; Behind the Battle by T. C. Worsley
  68. Review of The Spanish Dilemma by E. Allison Peers; A Key to Victory: Spain by Charles Duff
  69. Extract from War-time Diary
  70. Review of The Forge by Arturo Barea,1 translated and with an introduction by Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell2
  71. Extract from letter to Partisan Review
  72. Extract from BBC Weekly News Review for India, 22 [Comparison with the Spanish Civil War]
  73. ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’ [1942?]
  74. Proposed BBC Broadcast on the Spanish Civil War
  75. Review of Spain in Eclipse, 1937–1943 by E. Allison Peers; Behind the Spanish Mask by Lawrence Dundas
  76. Extract from ‘As I Please’, 10 [How the lie becomes truth]
  77. ‘The Eight Years of War: Spanish Memories’
  78. Review of An Interlude in Spain by Charles d’Ydewalle, translated by Eric Sutton
  79. Review of The Clash by Arturo Barea1
  80. Orwell’s Pamphlet Collection
  81. A summary of letters from and to David Astor, 4 and 5
  82. Further Reading

3.In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell tells how his hotel room was searched by six plain-clothes policemen, who took away ‘every scrap of paper we possessed’, except, fortunately, Eileen’s and his passports and their cheque-book. He learned later that the police had seized some of his belongings, including a bundle of dirty linen, from the Sanatorium Maurín; pp. 151, 162–3 [VI/164, 178–9].

4.Homage to Catalonia.

5. N. A. Holdaway, schoolmaster and Marxist theorist. He was a member of the Independent Socialist Party, a contributor to The Adelphi and Director of the Adelphi Centre.

6. John Middleton Murry (1889–1957) was nominally the editor of The (New) Adelphi, which he had founded in June 1923, for fourteen years but he was associated with the journal throughout its life (1923–55). The journal published about fifty contributions by Orwell and did much to foster his career as a writer. Murry was successively a fervent disciple of D. H. Lawrence, an unorthodox Marxist, a pacifist and a back-to-the-land farmer. He also edited Peace News from July 1940 to April 1946. Despite his deeply entrenched pacifism, over which he and Orwell disagreed, they remained on good terms.

[382]

‘Eye-Witness in Barcelona’

Controversy: The Socialist Forum, 1vol. I, no. 11, August 1937

This article was published as ‘J’ai été témoin à Barcelone…’, translated by Yvonne Davet, in La Révolution Prolétarienne: Revue Bimensuelle Syndicaliste Révolutionnaire, no. 255, 25 September 1937. It was this article that the New Statesman refused to publish; see Orwell’s letter to Rayner Heppenstall, 31 July 1937, above. Yvonne Davet (born c. 1895) was for many years secretary to André Gide. She and Orwell corresponded before and after World War II, and she translated several of his books into French in the hope that she could find a publisher for them in France. Her translation of Homage to Catalonia, completed before the outbreak of war and read by Orwell, was not published until 1955. At the time it had notes by Orwell not found in English editions until 1986. She also translated Jean Rhys, Graham Greene and Iris Murdoch. She and Orwell never met.

Orwell’s article was preceded in Controversy by this note:

George Orwell, author of The Road to Wigan Pier, has been fighting with the ILP Contingent on the Aragón front. Here he contributes a personal account of events in Barcelona during the May Days and of the suppression of the POUM in the following month.

I

Much has already been written about the May riots in Barcelona, and the major events have been carefully tabulated in Fenner Brockway’s pamphlet, The Truth About Barcelona, which so far as my own knowledge goes is entirely accurate. I think, therefore, that the most useful thing I can do here, in my capacity as eye-witness, is to add a few footnotes upon several of the most-disputed points.