Chapters (82)
- Cover
- Brand Page
- Orwell in Spain
- Orwell in Spain
- Introduction
- Editorial Note
- Acknowledgements
- Orwell’s Journey to Spain, December 1936
- Extract from ‘As I Please’, 42 [The Journey to Spain]
- Jennie Lee to Margaret M. Goalby, 23 June 1950: Orwell’s Arrival in Barcelona
- Orwell in Spain, December 1936
- Eileen Blair to Leonard Moore
- ‘British Author with the Militia’
- Eileen Blair to her mother
- To Eileen Blair
- Extract from letter from Eileen Blair to Leonard Moore
- Eileen Blair to Dr Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy
- Extract from letter to Victor Gollancz
- Orwell’s Wound
- To Cyril Connolly
- Eileen Blair to Dr Laurence (‘Eric’) O’Shaughnessy
- Escape from Spain
- BARCELONA 13TH JULY, 1937
- Charles Doran
- Homage to Catalonia
- X
- ‘Spilling the Spanish Beans’
- Eileen Blair to John McNair
- George Kopp to Dr Laurence O’Shaughnessy
- Translation of letter written in Spanish by George Kopp to Lieutenant-Colonel Burillo,7 Chief of Police, Barcelona
- George Kopp to Eileen Blair
- Review of The Spanish Cockpit by Franz Borkenau; Volunteer in Spain by John Sommerfield
- To Rayner Heppenstall
- ‘Eye-Witness in Barcelona’
- Abstracts of Reports on the Spanish Civil War in the Daily Worker and News Chronicle, 1936–7
- To Amy Charlesworth
- To Charles Doran
- Unpublished Response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War
- To Geoffrey Gorer
- Review of Red Spanish Notebook by Mary Low and Juan Brea; Heroes of the Alcazar by R. Timmermans; Spanish Circus by Martin Armstrong
- To H. N. Brailsford
- 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
- H. N. Brailsford to Orwell
- To H. N. Brailsford
- Review of The Tree of Gernika by G. L. Steer; Spanish Testament by Arthur Koestler
- To the Editor, Time and Tide
- To Raymond Mortimer
- To Stephen Spender
- To Geoffrey Gorer
- ‘Notes* on the Spanish Militias
- To the Editor, The Times Literary Supplement
- Sir Richard Rees to Orwell
- To the Editor, The Listener
- Review of Spain’s Ordeal1 by Robert Sencourt; Franco’s Rule [anonymous]
- Review of The Civil War in Spain by Frank Jellinek1
- Review of Searchlight on Spain by the Duchess of Atholl1
- To the Editor, Manchester Guardian
- To Yvonne Davet
- To Raymond Postgate
- Orwell made two copies of this summary of the article in La Flèche of 14 October 1938, by L.-P. Foucaud.
- Review of The Church in Spain, 1737-1937 by E. Allison Peers; Crusade in Spain by Eoin O’Dujfy1
- To Frank Jellinek
- ‘Release of George Kopp’
- ‘Caesarean Section in Spain
- To Yvonne Davet
- Review of Hotel in Flight by Nancy Johnstone
- Review of The Last Days of Madrid by S. Casado, translated by Rupert Croft-Cooke; Behind the Battle by T. C. Worsley
- Review of The Spanish Dilemma by E. Allison Peers; A Key to Victory: Spain by Charles Duff
- Extract from War-time Diary
- Review of The Forge by Arturo Barea,1 translated and with an introduction by Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell2
- Extract from letter to Partisan Review
- Extract from BBC Weekly News Review for India, 22 [Comparison with the Spanish Civil War]
- ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’ [1942?]
- Proposed BBC Broadcast on the Spanish Civil War
- Review of Spain in Eclipse, 1937–1943 by E. Allison Peers; Behind the Spanish Mask by Lawrence Dundas
- Extract from ‘As I Please’, 10 [How the lie becomes truth]
- ‘The Eight Years of War: Spanish Memories’
- Review of An Interlude in Spain by Charles d’Ydewalle, translated by Eric Sutton
- Review of The Clash by Arturo Barea1
- Orwell’s Pamphlet Collection
- A summary of letters from and to David Astor, 4 and 5
- Further Reading
The implication here is, (a) that I had been wounded before the fighting in Barcelona, and (b) that I had to flee the country as a direct result of my ‘disheartening experiences’. As was made perfectly clear in my book, I was wounded some little time after the fighting in Barcelona, and I had to leave the country as a result of events which I set out at considerable length and which, so far as I know, had no direct connexion with my ‘disheartening experiences’.
The rest of his review is mainly an attempt to throw discredit upon the Spanish Militias who were holding the Aragón front with inadequate weapons and other equipment during the first year of war. He has distorted various things that I said in order to make it appear that I agree with him. For example:–
Discipline did not exist in the Militia: ‘if a man disliked an order he would step out of the ranks and argue fiercely with the officer’.
I never said that discipline ‘did not exist in the Militia’. What your reviewer failed to mention is that in the passage quoted (‘if a man disliked an order’, &c.) I was describing the behaviour of raw recruits their first day at the barracks, when they behaved as raw recruits always behave, as anyone with military experience would expect.
Yours truly,
George Orwell
The reviewer replied:
Mr. Orwell is unduly sensitive. I stated that he was wounded in the trench warfare round Huesca and that he was compelled to flee the country after some disheartening experiences in the internal rising in Barcelona – all facts recorded at length in his book. If my necessarily brief sentence implied that he was wounded before the rising this was unintentional and does not seem to reflect on him or anyone else. I did not say he was compelled to flee because of his part in the May rising, or that there was any direct connexion between the two events. Actually, however, it seems clear that it was because Mr. Orwell was then, and subsequently, associated with the POUM organization, which was officially blamed for the rising, that he was obliged to leave the country.
Of the May rising and the subsequent period Mr. Orwell uses the words ‘concentrated disgust’, ‘fury’, ‘miserable internecine scrap’, ‘cesspool’, ‘disillusionment’ and ‘a depressing outlook’. If that is not disheartenment, what is?