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 Unpublished Response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War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. Sir Arthur Bryant (1899–1985), conservatively inclined historian, whose books include The Spirit of Conservatism (1929), Stanley Baldwin: A Tribute (1937), Unfinished Victory, on Germany 1918–33 (1940), The Years of Endurance, 1793–1802 (1942) and The Years of Victory 1802–12 (1944). Of Unfinished Victory, Kenneth Rose said, ‘Goebbels himself could not have composed a more ingratiating apologia for the Nazis. Anti-semitism is a recurrent theme’, yet he received ‘a whole chestful of decorations’ including a knighthood and the Companion of Honour (Sunday Telegraph, 1 August 1993).

4. E. Allison Peers (1891–1952), an Anglican scholar of English and French literature, was appointed in 1920 to the chair of Spanish at Liverpool University. His knowledge of Spain was extensive, and he wrote several distinguished studies on that country. He wrote on contemporary Spain from well before the outbreak of the civil war for the Bulletin of Spanish Studies. Under the pseudonym Bruce Truscot he wrote the influential Redbrick University (1943).

5. José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955), Spanish essayist and philosopher. Of his many books and essays, The Revolt of the Masses (in Spanish, 1929–30; in English, 1932) is perhaps now best known. Orwell reviewed Invertebrate Spain at greater length in ‘The Lure of Profundity’, New English Weekly, 30 December 1937 (415).

[424]

H. N. Brailsford to Orwell

17 December 1937

Dear Mr. Blair,

The story about the theft of guns & tanks from an arsenal in the rear of the Aragón front came from the Russian Consul-General Ossienko0,1 who has since been purged. He had his notes before him & gave me date, place & the details of the forged order by which it was worked. I also took notes but haven’t got them now. The people who actually did this were Friends of Durruti2 but I gathered they were acting then & later with Poum. I had this from him at the end of April, before the rising. I accepted it, because the Consul-General struck me as a fair-minded man, who had much good to say about Anarchists. About Poum he said very little, but was in general less prejudiced than most Communists. I had confirmation later of this story from the latter.

I’m puzzled when you now tell me that no guns were used in the rising. I hope I haven’t been unwittingly unfair.

I hope your wife is well after her very trying time in Barcelona. You must both feel very sore.

Sincerely Yours
H. N. Brailsford

P. S. Is it conceivable that the guns were stolen, but were recovered before the rising?

1. Vladimir Antonov-Ovsïenko (1884–1937), Soviet Consul-General in Barcelona. He was recalled by Stalin to take up a high judicial post shortly after the May Events of 1937, but he disappeared soon after his return and was presumably murdered. He had led troops in the assualt on the Winter Palace at St Petersburg in 1917. Orwell refers to him in Homage to Catalonia, p. 204 [VI/234].

2. The Friends of Durruti were an extreme anarchist group (see Thomas, 656, n. 1). Orwell refers to them in Homage to Catalonia, pp. 194–5 and 202–3 [VI/219–20 and 231–3].

[414B]

To H. N. Brailsford

18 December 1937

The Stores, Wallington, Near Baldock, Herts

Dear Mr Brailsford,