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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 Unpublished Response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War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

My wife wishes to be remembered to you. Neither of us suffered any ill-effects from being in Spain, though, of course, the whole thing was terribly distressing and disillusioning. The effects of my wound passed off more quickly than was expected. If it would interest I will send you a copy of my book on Spain when it comes out.

Yours sincerely,
Eric Blair

1. Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluña (The United Catalan Socialist Party, a communist party). For its ‘line’, see Homage to Catalonia, pp. 179–80 [VI/201–2].

2. John Langdon-Davies (1897–1971), journalist and author. He wrote for the News Chronicle in Spain and was joint secretary with the communist lawyer, Geoffrey Bing, of the Comintern-inspired Commission of Inquiry into Alleged Breaches of the Non-Intervention Agreement in Spain; see Thomas 397–8. Orwell’s ‘refusal to accept the politics of liquidation and elimination’ led to sneering by ‘harder Communists’ – of which Langdon-Davies was one – at Homage to Catalonia: see Valentine Cunningham, British Writers of the Thirties (1988), 427.

[421]

Review of The Tree of Gernika by G. L. Steer; Spanish Testament by Arthur Koestler

Time and Tide, 5 February 1938

It goes without saying that everyone who writes of the Spanish War writes as a partisan. What is perhaps less obvious is that, because of the huge discords that have shaken and threatened to split the Government side, every pro-Government writer is really involved in several distinct controversies. He is writing for the Government, but he is also (though he generally pretends otherwise) writing against the Communists, or the Trotskyists, or the Anarchists, or what-not. Mr. Steer’s book is no exception to the general rule, but he carries a different set of prejudices from the majority of pro-Government writers, because he happens to have seen the war not in eastern Spain but in the Basque country.

In a way the problems here were simpler. The Basques were Catholic and Conservative, the left-wing organizations were weak even in the large towns (as Mr. Steer says, ‘there was no socéial revolution in Bilbao’), and what the Basques chiefly wanted was regional autonomy, which they were likelier to get from the Popular Front Government than from Franco. Mr. Steer writes entirely from the Basque standpoint, and he has, very strongly, the curious English characteristic of being unable to praise one race without damning another. Being pro-Basque, he finds it necessary to be anti-Spanish, i.e., to some extent anti-Government as well as anti-Franco. As a result his book is so full of gibes at the Asturians and other non-Basque loyalists as to make one doubtful of his reliability as a witness – a pity, for he has had opportunities that were shared by very few Englishmen.