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- Unpublished Response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War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
I have sent you a book, which I hope you will enjoy – Georges Bernanos’ Les Grands Cimetières sous la Lune.2 You will, of course, like me, be infuriated by his sentimentality. He’s a Royalist and his attitude to ‘les pauvres’ is imbecile. He says they must be ‘honoured’, as the middle ages honoured women, for their ‘faiblesse’. All the same, he’s a very good chap in many ways, as you’ll find if you persevere with the book. His, and his son’s experiences with the Phalangistess3 are in a way analogous to your experience with the P.O.U.M. The fascist treatment of the Phalanges corresponds very much to the C.P. treatment of the P.O.U.M. and the idealistic anarchists.
And, by the way, if you want to read another really good book on Spain – try Elliot Paul’s Life & Death of a Spanish Town.4 It is about the island of Ibiza before & up to the war and makes a good comparison to Bernanos, which is about the neighbouring island of Majorca and which, more or less, begins just where Elliot Paul’s ends, with the first fighting in the Balearic Isles.5 Both these books really are worth reading, and, with yours, they are the only books about Spain that can be said to be written by people with free (i.e. fundamentally honest, if often mistaken) minds. I read your book through at one sitting. It is painful reading, of course, but on the whole it convinced me that you were lucky, in spite of everything, to have got mixed up with the P.O.U.M. & not the C.P.
That short period when the untrained anarchist militia, almost unarmed, were holding the Aragón front, really was the only pure revolutionary experience of the whole sordid business.
However, even my own even more sordid though less exciting experiences were not without flashes of the same thing – and anyway I did not need convincing that ‘equality’ in the anarchist sense can work – though whether it ever will be allowed to in this world, God only knows. With all respect to God, I find it hard to believe that he will ever allow it to. I get more and more pessimistic.
Chamberlain6 is going to sell Spain & Eastern Europe to Fascism in return for a (temporary) immunity for the British Empire & British Capitalism.