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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 Unpublished Response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War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

Finally, as to indiscipline, it is a question of point of view. Mr. Orwell speaks of ‘a mob of ragged children in the front line’, one of whom threw a hand grenade into a dugout fire ‘for a joke’; of slapping generals on the back, of how when men refused to obey orders it was necessary to appeal to them in the name of comradeship, and of how ‘You often had to argue for five minutes before you got an order obeyed.’ He says further:– ‘Actually a newly raised draft of militia was an indisciplined mob… In a workers’ army discipline is theoretically voluntary,’ &c. He adds that ‘it is a tribute to the strength of revolutionary discipline that the Militias stayed in the field at all’.

On 28 May 1938, The Times Literary Supplement published a second letter from Orwell:

Sir, – I am very sorry to trouble you with this correspondence, but your reviewer has again resorted to misquotation. For example: ‘Actually a newly raised draft of militia was an undisciplined mob.’ In my book the sentence ran as follows: ‘Actually, a newly raised draft of militia was an undisciplined mob not because the officers called the privates “Comrade” but because new troops are always an undisciplined mob.’

By suppressing the second half of the sentence he has given it a totally different meaning; and similarly with various other statements which he has picked out of their contexts. As for his rearrangement of the order of events in the book, he pleads that his account was ‘necessarily brief’, this does not seem any reason for altering the chronology.

Yours truly,
George Orwell

1. Reviews in The Times Literary Supplement were then customarily unsigned. Records show that the reviewer was Maurice Percy Ashley (1907–94; CBE, 1978), journalist, author and historian. He was Winston Churchill’s research assistant in 1929, served in the Intelligence Corps, 1940–45, was Deputy Editor of The Listener, 1946–58 and Editor, 1958–67.

[445]

Sir Richard Rees to Orwell

25 May [1938]    Handwritten

c/o Thos Cook & Sons, Place de la Madeleine, Paris

Dear Eric

I have just reached Paris from Barcelona1 and I learn by a letter from Eileen that you have been laid up since March 8 but are doing very well – which latter I am indeed glad to hear. I knew you had been ill, but didn’t realise it was ever since March 8 (before I left for Barcelona). If I had known then I would have tried to get in touch with you before leaving.