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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 Unpublished Response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War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

During my last visit to Spain I felt ashamed of being English. In my more catastrophically gloomy moods (which are frequent) I find myself hoping that hell will break loose soon. After all, it would be better than a few more decades of ignominious security which Chamberlain hopes to buy by his concessions to Fascism. All the same, your description of hand-to-hand fighting convinces me I could never be a good soldier. I had plenty of bombing & shelling & was sometimes under rifle fire, and I saw plenty of violent death – and I found it all more or less bearable.

But I never had to experience anything like that raid you describe, when the white armlets failed to arrive and somebody said ‘couldn’t we arrange for the fascists to wear white armlets?’! I should never have enough aggressive spirit (i.e. courage) to get through an experience like that, sitting tight while being bombed or machine gunned from the air is quite a different matter and infinitely easier.

I hope you are comfortable and have plenty to read. Eileen tells me you have written a Peace pamphlet.7

I can’t imagine peace, I can only imagine negative war – i.e. the kind of peace you find in Paris & London when you return from Spain. And really I am not sure I don’t prefer war to that kind of peace.

But I suppose it is nonsense to talk like that, really.

Well, au revoir, and I hope you’ll find Bernanos interesting.

Yours Richard

1. Sir Richard Rees (1900–1970) had been an attaché at the British Embassy in Paris, 1922– 3, and Honorary Treasurer and Lecturer, London District of the Workers’ Educational Association, 1925–7. From October 1930 to 1937 he was editor of The Adelphi (1930–1932 with Max Plowman), and he introduced a more political and self-consciously literary tone to its pages. His generous nature is reflected in Ravelston of Keep the Aspidistra Flying. He gave much encouragement to Orwell in the thirties, was a partner to Orwell in his Jura farm, and he became, with Sonia Orwell, Orwell’s joint literary executor. He was a painter; among the books he wrote is George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory (1961). He served in the defence of Madrid, initially with the Communist Party, becoming unwittingly embroiled in ‘the political business’.

2. Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) was a polemical novelist whose passionate stance was expressed with subtlety. Les Grands Cimetières sous la Lune (1938; English title, Diary of My Times, 1938) fiercely condemns the atrocities committed in Mallorca by the Fascists and sanctioned by his, the Roman Catholic, Church. He is best remembered for his novel Journal d’un curé de campagne (1936; English title, Diary of a Country Priest, 1937), made into a prize-winning film by Robert Bresson (1950).