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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 Unpublished Response to Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War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

Its chief virtue is that it is well-balanced and keeps the main facts in the right perspective. Its chief fault is the fault of virtually all books on the Spanish war – political partisanship. As I have pointed out elsewhere, there is not even among Government supporters one simple and generally-accepted ‘version’ of the Spanish war. The Loyalists include Socialists, Communists, Anarchists and ‘Trotskyists’ – one might add Basques and Catalans – who have never been in quite perfect agreement as to what the war is about. Every English writer on the Government side adopts more or less unreservedly the ‘line’ of one or other political party, and unfortunately he usually does so while claiming to be strictly impartial. The Duchess of Atholl follows the Communist ‘line’ throughout, and this fact should be borne in mind in reading her book. So long as she is dealing with the origins of the rebellion, with the military side of the war and the scandal of non-intervention, all is well; but I would be a little cautious about accepting her account of the internal political situation, which is one-sided and very much over-simplified.

In her final chapter, ‘What it means to us’, she points out the probable consequence of a Fascist victory in Spain – that England may lose the command of the Mediterranean and France may be faced with another hostile frontier. This raises what is perhaps the most mysterious question of the whole Spanish war. Why has our Government behaved as it has done? Without any doubt the British Cabinet has behaved as though it wished Franco to win; and yet if Franco wins it may – to put it at its worst – mean the loss of India. The Duchess of Atholl states the facts but does not offer any explanation of Mr. Chamberlain’s attitude. Other writers have been less cautious. The real meaning of British foreign policy in the last two years will not become clear until the war in Spain is over; but in trying to divine it I believe it is much safer to assume that the British Cabinet are not fools and that they have no intention of giving anything away.3

1. Katharine Stewart-Murray, Duchess of Atholl (1874–1960; DBE, 1918), was trained as a musician, but devoted her life to public service. She became the second woman, and first Conservative woman, to hold ministerial office: Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education, 1924-9. She campaigned ceaselessly against cruelty in many forms and conducted a campaign in 1929 against the practice of female circumcision in Africa. Opposed to her party’s policy of appeasement of Hitler, she resigned her seat in Parliament in 1938 and campaigned, unsuccessfully, for re-election on a platform of resistance to Hitler.