George Orwell Diaries

Endnotes

1

kip: originally a brothel; then a common lodging-house (as here) and by extension, a bed; today a sleep.

2

Covent Garden: in Orwell’s time (and for some three hundred years before) the central fruit and vegetable market serving London. The market moved to Nine Elms, Battersea, in 1974.

3

St Martin-in-the-Fields Church: faces on to the North-East corner of Trafalgar Square. Its crypt provided shelter for down-and-outs. Shelter is still provided today.

4

posters: handwritten substitution for parcels.

5

Eugénie Grandet: novel by Honoré de Balzac (1834) in the series ‘Scenes from Provincial Life’ of his Comédie Humaine.

6

spike: workhouse

7

‘A voice so thrilling . . . furthest ’Ebrides’: a corrupted form of a verse from Wordsworth’s poem, ‘The Solitary Reaper’: ‘A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard / In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird, / Breaking the silence of the seas / Amongst the farthest Hebrides’ (1805).

8

Borstal: a town in Kent which developed a system designed to reform young offenders through punishment, education, and job training. It was applied more widely to a series of such institutions but was abolished by the Criminal Justice Act, 1982, and replaced by youth custody centres.

9

Little Grey Home in the West: sentimental song, composed 1911, words by D. Eardley-Wilmot; music by Hermann Lohr. It was popularised in the First World War by the Australian baritone, Peter Dawson, whose fine voice readily overcame the disadvantages of acoustic recording and shellac discs.

10

6/– : six shillings and, later in the sentence, 1/6 = one shilling and sixpence or 18 pence. In pre-metric currency, one pound sterling (£1) was divided into twenty shillings and each shilling into twelve pennies – so £1 = 240 pence. It is difficult to give precise equivalents of value with today’s prices because individual items vary considerably. However, a rough approximation can be gained if prices in the 1930s are multiplied by forty to suggest current values. Thus, six shilling is equivalent (roughly) to £12 today.

11

tapped: obtained – in effect, begged.

12

Tramp Major: official in charge of day-to-day organisation and discipline of the tramps in the workhouse.

13

pokes: sacks (compare ‘a pig in a poke’).

14

walk: Orwell originally wrote work.

15

9/- a week each: £18 at today’s values – far less than the theoretical earnings of 30/- (thirty shillings, say £60 today) referred to earlier.

16

Names omitted when first printed in 1968.

17

Mr F.’s aunt: the aunt of Flora Finching’s deceased husband in Dickens’s Little Dorrit. Left in Flora’s care, she was simply known as ‘Mr F.’s Aunt’. Her major characteristics are described as ‘extreme severity and grim taciturnity; sometimes interrupted by a propensity to offer remarks in a deep warning voice, which, being totally uncalled for by anything said by anybody, and traceable to no association of ideas, confounded and terrified the mind’. One interjection might have had a special appeal for Orwell, who lived at Henley-on-Thames as a child: ‘Mr F.’s Aunt, after regarding the company for ten minutes with a malevolent gaze, delivered the following fearful remark: “When we lived at Henley, Barnes’s gander was stole by tinkers” ’ (ch. 13).

18

George Belcher (1875–1947), a Royal Academician whose books of drawings included Characters (1922), Taken from Life (1929), and Potted Char (1933).

19

the dishwashers in Paris: Orwell worked as a dishwasher – a plongeur – in 1929; see Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933, two years after his hop-picking experiences.

20

The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 2 volumes, 1890; 12 volumes, 1906–15, by Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941).

21

Bloody Sunday: this took place in London on November 13, 1887 (not 1888). Some 10,000 protesters marched to Trafalgar Square where a number of speakers (including George Bernard Shaw) were to address them. They were protesting about conditions in Ireland and demanded the release from prison of an MP, William O’Brien. Some two thousand police and four hundred soldiers opposed them (although the latter did not resort to the use of their bayonets or firing rifles).

22

Billingsgate: Billingsgate Fish Market (Trafalgar Way, London, E14) has over fifty traders mainly selling fish but some poultry and other products (e.g. potatoes) are sold. Nowadays it is open from Tuesday to Saturday, from 5.00am to 8.00am; one trader sells shellfish on Sundays from 6.00am to 8.00am.

23

a Get: presumably the contemptuous ‘git’ as in ‘you git’, an ignorant fool. Compare the Scots ‘gyte’ (pronounced ‘git’), formerly used for a child.

1

Primo Buffo: chief comic singer

2

Meriden: traditional centre of England and site of First World War memorial to cyclists.

3

conical chimneys (“pot-banks”): for the manufacture of pottery.

4

Rudyard Lake: Orwell had to make a detour to walk by Rudyard Lake. Dr Robert Fyson has shown why Orwell did this. In 1863, Lockwood Kipling and Alice Macdonald had a picnic here. They married two years later and when their first child was born they gave him the name Rudyard. Rudyard Kipling died on January 18, 1936, and Orwell had written an appreciation of him published on January 23 in New English Weekly (CW, X, pp. 409–10). In this he wrote ‘now that he is dead, I for one cannot help wishing that I could offer some kind of tribute – a salute of guns, if such a thing were available – to the story-teller who was so important to my childhood’. This detour, in the bitter cold, was his tribute.

5

Frank Meade: an official of the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers. He ran the Manchester office of The Adelphi (which, from 1930, had published some of Orwell’s reviews), and was business manager of Labour’s Northern Voice, an organ of the Independent Socialist Party.

6

Joe Kennan : at the time an unemployed coal miner and activist in the Independent Labour Party. He found Orwell lodgings with John and Lily Anderton (Mr and Mrs Hornby in this diary). For a valuable interview with Joe Kennan, see Orwell Remembered (pp. 130–3). See also n. 19 below.

7

N. U. W. M.: National Unemployed Workers’ Movement.

8

Warrington Lane: illustrated in Peter Lewis, George Orwell: The Road to 1984 (1981, p. 50. Wigan Pier is illustrated on the same page.)

9

nyastygmus = nystagmus, continual rapid oscillation of the eyeballs.

10

The total income of the Hornbys is roughly equivalent to £150 today.

11

Wal Hannington: (1896–1996), a leader of the NUWM and author of Unemployed Struggles 1919–1936 and The Problem of the Distressed Areas, published by the Left Book Club in November 1937. Like The Road to Wigan Pier, which preceded it, it had a centre section of thirty-two plates. Reg Reynolds, one of Orwell’s pacifist friends, writing of his sympathy with the Hunger Marchers, observed that when they arrived at Hyde Park Corner, London, they ‘did not look at all hungry – least of all that stout Communist, Wal Hannington, who led them’ (My Life and Crimes, 1956, p. 106). Hannington also wrote the useful Mr Chairman! A Short Guide to the Conduct and Procedure of Meetings (1950). The £1–6–0 raised is equivalent to 312 pence – by an audience of about 200, so about a penny-ha’penny from each person on average.

12

Q.V. = quod vide = which see (in this case Orwell’s notes, some of which are reproduced in Complete Works ; see X, 546; also plate 31 of The Road to Wigan Pier (where the caravans are in Durham, not Wigan).

13

The contrast between the two passages will be apparent. In the Diary, Orwell is on foot when passing the squalid side-alley. When the young woman looks up and catches Orwell’s eye there is an obvious immediacy. In the book, Orwell is at a distance, in a train, looking through a window and being drawn away from the young woman at the waste-pipe: there is a distancing effect emphasised by Orwell’s ‘I was almost near enough to catch her eye’.

14

22 Darlington Rd.: (‘Rd.’ typed in error for Street). Orwell left 72 Warrington Lane when Mrs Hornby was taken ill and had to be admitted to hospital. Lodgings were found for him over the infamous tripe shop described in chapter 1 of The Road to Wigan Pier. This is usually taken to be 22 Darlington Street (see Crick, p. 282) but Sydney Smith (b. 1909) argues it was 35 Sovereign Street, lodgers living next door at no. 33. See Orwell Remembered, pp. 136–9. Orwell certainly addressed his letters from 22 Darlington Street.

15

John Bull: founded 1906 and initially edited by Horatio Bottomley (1860–1933). The journal specialised in sensationalism and competitions for relatively large prizes. Bottomley, described himself in World War One as ‘The Soldier’s Friend’, and campaigned for Ramsay MacDonald (later Labour Prime Minister) to be imprisoned, but it was Bottomley who ended up in prison for fraud.

16

Lyons: at this time, a chain of popular teashops and restaurants.

17

Ernst Thaelmann: (1886–1944), a transport worker and Chairman of the German Communist Party from 1925. He was a member of the Reichstag, 1924–33, and ran for the Presidency against Hindenburg in 1932, attracting five million votes. He was arrested in 1933; his trial was postponed several times and in October 1936 it was announced that he would be detained for life without trial. He was officially reported killed in an air raid but was in fact shot by the Nazis at Buchenwald in August 1944. Germans fighting for the Republic in Spain formed themselves into the Thaelmann Centuria (later, Brigade).

18

For you can’t do that there ’ere : Orwell mentions this song in ‘Songs We used to Sing’, January 19, 1946 (CW, XVIII, p. 51) and suggests it seems to be ‘a reflection of the existing political situation . . . perhaps a half-conscious response to Hitler’.

19

Jerry (Joe) Kennan: an unemployed collier at the time and an activist in the Independent Labour Party. He maintained that the lodgings at 72 Warrington Lane were spotlessly clean, despite Orwell’s strictures, and ‘that Orwell left it for the tripe shop in order to find something worse’. Whether hurried or not, Orwell’s departure tallies with Mrs Hornby’s illness (see n. 14 above). Kennan, understandably, may have resented not being sent an autographed copy of The Road to Wigan Pier; on the other hand he was gracious in stating that ‘the book was a fair book. I don’t think it exaggerated the situation at all. And I think it gives a clear picture of what conditions were like in industrial areas in 1936’ (Orwell Remembered, pp. 130 and 133).

20

Orwell presumably meant pneumatic drills.

21

May and John Deiner ran the Liverpool branch of The Adelphi circle. Orwell was introduced to them either by Middleton Murray or Richard Rees of The Adelphi. John was a telephone engineer. Orwell arrived very ill and because of this he saw less of Liverpool than he had hoped. He spoke to them of wishing to return to London by ship in order to experience conditions at sea. There is a charming memoir of Orwell by May Deiner in Orwell Remembered, pp. 134–6. She concludes: ‘He was such a real man . . . We didn’t feel any embarrassment at all with him. Just that he hadn’t much to say unless he was talking about his books or the things that interested him, about the depression . . . And yet you felt the warmth there; you felt the concern if you like’.

22

George Garrett (1896–1966) was an unemployed seaman with whom Orwell got on very well. He wrote for The Adelphi and short stories under the pseudonym ‘Matt Lowe’ (i.e. matelot). He had spent much of the 1920s in the USA and was a member of ‘the Wobblies’, the Industrial Workers of the World, a revolutionary industrial union. His ability to imitate an American accent won him small parts at the Merseyside Unity Theatre.

23

Of the four or five days Orwell stayed with the Deiners, Orwell was, at their insistence, kept in bed for three days (Crick, p. 285).

24

Battling Siki (1897–1925; born Amadou M’Barick Fall) a Senegalese boxer who had fought with a French Colonial regiment in World War One. He unexpectedly knocked out the great French champion Georges Carpentier early in 1922 to take the light heavyweight championship of the world. He lost the title shortly afterwards to the Irishman, Mike McTigue. Siki’s attempt to make his name as a boxer in the USA was unsuccessful and one morning he was found shot dead in a back street of New York. The Siki-Carpentier fight was filmed and shown widely; Orwell may well have seen it before leaving for Burma.

25

Chesterton-Beachcomber: G.K. Chesterton (1897–1925), Roman Catholic apologist, editor, and prolific writer, creator of the priest-detective, Father Brown. He had published Orwell’s first professional article in English (‘A Farthing Newspaper’, 1928, CW, X, pp. 119–21). The ‘Beachcomber’ column in the Daily Express was started in 1924 by J. B. Morton (1893–1979), also a Roman Catholic. The column was mildly satiric and the object of frequent pejorative reference by Orwell. For a more considered comparison of Chesterton and Morton by Orwell, see ‘As I Please’, no 30 (June 23, 1944, CW, XVI, pp. 262–5).

26

rooks copulating: All editions of Road to Wigan Pier until CW, V, 16, line 16 have ‘rooks treading’. The second proof has ‘rooks courting’, but even that was regarded by the publisher as too explicit. According to Eileen Blair’s letter to Gollancz of January 17, 1937, Orwell had originally written ‘copulating’, as here in his diary.

27

P.A.C.: The local authority’s Public Assistance Committee to whom those out of benefit could apply for financial assistance.

28

Brotherhood: in Nineteen Eighty-Four, O’Brien explains that those who have read Goldstein’s Testament ‘will be full members of the Brotherhood’, which opposes the State (CW, IX, p. 182).

29

Adventures of a Black Girl: The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God by George Bernard Shaw, 1932, in which the author, posing as an innocent but intelligent and inquisitive black girl, makes an allegorical philosophical journey asking such questions as why God is male. In the Preface, Shaw explains that he was inspired to write ‘this tale’ when held up in Knysna, South Africa, for five weeks ‘in the African summer and English winter of 1932’. He had intended to write a play ‘but found myself writing the story of the black girl instead’. Having written it, ‘I proceed to speculate on what it means’.

30

21 Estcourt Avenue: Home of Orwell’s older sister, Marjorie (1898–1946), and her husband, Humphrey Dakin (1896–1970). They had married in July 1920. He worked for the National Savings Committee. Orwell visited them from time to time ‘to get some writing done and be looked after by his sister. Humphrey seemed to resent this’, considering Orwell as a work-shy drop-out (see Orwell Remembered, pp. 127–30). Orwell stayed with the Dakins from March 5–11 and 26–30, 1936.

31

attached: the item attached was a cutting from the News of the World, March 1, 1936, showing how a W. Leach of Lilford Road, London, S.E., needed to spend only 3s 11½d a week on food (20p in decimal currency). When, in November 1993, I costed the items he listed the total came to about £8.80. Mr Leach stated that though he preferred to boil the carrots he bought, he ate them raw because ‘to boil water would cost too much’. This remark prompts one to wonder how genuine was Mr Leach’s claim. For further details see The Road to Wigan Pier, pp. 87–8.

32

See CW, X, pp. 571–5, for Statistical Information provided by Sheffield Medical Officer of Health.

33

The Skin Game: tragicomedy in three acts by John Galsworthy, 1920. It dramatises a feud between two families, one long-established and upper-class and the other a lower-class family who had become wealthy. In 1931 Alfred Hitchcock made it into a film (not one of his best). Galsworthy had died fairly recently (1933).

34

Terrace: Orwell wrote ‘Terrace’ rather than ‘Avenue’ of a dozen or so lines earlier.

35

bus: Orwell’s handwritten emendation for the original ‘tram’.

36

Hôpital Cochin: Orwell was admitted for ‘une grippe’ to this Parisian hospital from March 7th to 22nd, 1929. He wrote about the experience in ‘How the Poor Die’, November 6, 1946, CW, XVIII, pp. 459–67.

37

Mosley: Sir Oswald Mosley, Bt. (1896–1980), fought in First World War, which left him with a permanent limp. He was first elected to Parliament (as a Conservative) in 1918 and then after sitting as an Independent, joined the ILP in 1924 but became a Labour MP in 1929. Founded the New Party and then, in 1932, the British Union of Fascists. He married Diana, one of the Mitford sisters, in the home of Dr Josef Goebbels in 1936. They were interned during the war.

38

Action: journal of the British Union of Fascists. On July 9, 1936, Orwell was asked by Mrs Hastings Bonara if she could quote from the Trafalgar Square scene of A Clergyman’s Daughter in a review she was writing for Action. She wrote that she hoped he was not violently anti-Fascist and would ‘consequently say CERTAINLY NOT’. Evidently Orwell did. In later correspondence she claimed that at least the BUF had a programme ‘for ameliorating the lot of our “Misérables”.’

39

in a Jewish one: seven months later, in October, Mosley attempted to force the BUF through the East End of London in an anti-Jewish protest march. The ensuing violent opposition led to what became known as the Battle of Cable Street.

40

Vth Army: presumably D. was taken prisoner during the German spring offensive south of the River Somme launched by Erich Ludendorff on March 21, 1918. The Fifth Army was forced to retreat and suffered very heavy casualties.

41

See CW, X, p. 558 (12 Albert Street East).

42

U.A.B.: Unemployment Assistance Board. For details see Road to Wigan Pier, pp. 85–6.

43

J. L. Garvin: (1868–1947) the right-wing editor of The Observer from 1908–42 .

44

See CW, X, p. 544.

45

Brown’s novel : Daughters of Albion (1935) by Alec Brown. In Orwell’s review of The Novel Today by Philip Henderson, he described it as ‘a huge wad of mediocre stuff’ (CW, X, p. 534). The dash between ‘b’ and ‘s’ is Orwell’s.

1

Marx: the Orwells’ dog, a black poodle. Whether it was named after Groucho or Karl Marx is a matter of dispute.

2

fangs: it was an ancient belief that a poisonous snake injects its venom by means of its forked tongue and not, as in this case, through two fangs. In Richard II Shakespeare has ‘a lurking adder / Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch / Throw death upon thy sovereign’s enemies’ (3.2.20–22). See also diary entry for August 11.

3

Sardinian mouflon sheep: a wild sheep found in the mountains of Sardinia and Corsica and, by extension, any large, wild, big-horned sheep.

4

Kit’s Coty : Kit’s Coty House is the chamber of a long barrow – an ancient grave mound – on Blue Bell Hill a little to the north of Aylesford. Orwell’s sketch, coupled with his description, gives a good approximation of the standing stones.

5

August 22: As the preceding entry is also dated August 22nd, this was probably the 23rd. Orwell had gone to Southwold to see his parents before leaving for North Africa.

6

Dr Colling s : The Blairs’ family doctor. His son, Dennis, was one of Orwell’s friends: see Introduction to ‘Hop-Picking Diary’.

7

The Stratheden was built at Barrow for P & O and commissioned in 1938. She was 664 feet long, 23,722 tons, and carried 448 first class and 563 tourist class passengers. She made fifty-five round trips to Australia returning from the last in September 1963. During the war she served as a troopship. After six years with a Greek owner she was broken up in 1969.

8

£6–10: Six pounds and ten shillings – perhaps about £250 today.

9

In 1940, when France fell, Spain took control of the whole of Tangier. After the war it was returned to its international status, until it became part of the Kingdom of Morocco in 1956. CNT was the Anarcho-Syndicalist Trade Union; FAI, the Anarchist Doctrinal Vanguard; UGT, the Socialist Trade Union; JSU, the United Youth Movement; and UHP stood for ‘!Uníos, Hermanos Proletarios!’ – ‘Unite, proletarian brothers’, a call first used during the miners’ rising in Asturias, 1934. See Thomas, p. xiii.

10

The Orwells arrived in Morocco on September 11, 1938, as the deposition before Robert Parr, the British Consul at Marrakech shows; see CW, XI, p. 196. Orwell’s date of birth is given as 1902, not 1903. In his letter to A. H. Joyce of February 12, 1938 (see CW, XI, pp. 120–2 ), he said that by mistake his date of birth had been incorrectly entered as 1902 in his passport. They were to stay for a little over six months, sailing from Casablanca for England on March 26, 1939. On September 18, signing as Eric Blair, Orwell accepted the lease of ‘une villa et une piece de domestique, route de casa, apartenant° a Monsieur Simont, Boucher a Marrakech’ (‘casa’ means Casablanca) for a minimum period of six months at 550 francs per month, running from October 15, 1938. The villa was about five kilometres from Marrakech. R. L. Bidwell records the French franc as being at 165 to the pound (31 to the dollar) in March 1938, and by January 1939 the rate had become 176.5 to the pound (39.8 to the dollar), a rate maintained at the following January (Currency Conversion Tables, 1970, 20). Thus, 550 francs was about £3.25 (515.50) during these six months. The rent of the cottage at Wallington was 7s 6d per week or £1.50 (in today’s coinage, if not value) for four weeks.

11

Marrakesh – Marrakech: Orwell uses both forms and sometimes it is not clear whether ‘s’ or ‘c’ is intended. It is given as ‘Marrakech’ hereafter.

12

kiff: Indian hemp, marijuana, from the Arabic, ‘kaif’, meaning enjoyment, well-being, state of dreamy intoxication. Also as kef, keef, kif.

13

Edouard Daladier (1884–1970): Socialist Premier of France, 1938–40. He signed the Munich Pact with Chamberlain, Hitler, and Mussolini, surrendering the Sudetenland to Germany on September 30, 1938. For Churchill’s account of Daladier’s visit to London on September 18 to discuss Hitler’s demands with Chamberlain, see his The Second World War, vol 1, pp. 270–72.

14

If she worked a seven-day week, she would be paid Frs. 45 a week; £50 a year was about Frs. 170 a week.

15

M. Simont: Orwell’s landlord, a butcher in Marrakech. The villa was set in an orange grove.

16

arbutus: It is not certain what Orwell is describing here because arbutus has leathery, rather than feathery, leaves. The most likely possibility is a tamarisk, which could grow in the situation Orwell describes.

17

lemons . . . different kinds: Orwell was evidently unaware that in the lemon all stages of flowering and fruiting occur at the same time on a single tree. However, he comes to this conclusion later: see Domestic Diary, 3.4.39.

18

Phlox D.: perhaps the annual, phlox drummondii, found in several varieties.

19

In the margin is a note in Orwell’s hand, with no indication of where it fits: potatoes (poor).

20

V.M.: La Vigie Marocaine, a local newspaper.

21

Marginal note in Orwell’s hand (though not precisely related to this paragraph): M. also eats left-over scraps from our table. Eating such scraps is forbidden during Ramadan. M. stands for Mahdjoub Mahommed, our servant see Moroccan Diary, 11.22.38 . Mahjoub is illustrated helping Orwell milk a goat in The Lost Orwell, plate 11.

22

Le Petit Marocain: a Casablanca daily morning newspaper.

23

without coming up for air: compare this with George Bowling in Coming Up for Air (which Orwell wrote whilst in Morocco): ‘You know the feeling I had. Coming up for air! Like the big sea-turtles when they come paddling up to the surface, stick their noses out and fill their lungs with a great gulp before they sink down again among the seaweed and the octopuses. We’re all stifling at the bottom of a dustbin, but I’d found the way to the top’ (CW, VII, Coming Up for Air, p. 177). Orwell does not mention a title for this novel before its publication, June 12, 1939.

24

scandals about the Air Ministry: this might refer to a demand by MPs on May 12, 1938, for an inquiry into the state of Britain’s air defences. Sir Hugh Dowding (1882–1970), who commanded Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain, is reported to have expressed relief when Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich after the deal made with Hitler (however shabby it was) because the supply of Spitfires was not yet coming fully on stream.

25

In The Lost Orwell, Plate 10 illustrates Orwell firing a catapult in Morocco.

26

Marshall Louis-Hubert-Gonzalve Lyautey (1854–1934): was, as French Resident-General of Morocco, largely responsible for the development of the country. He was French Minister of War, 1916–17, and organised the Colonial Exhibition in Paris in 1931.

27

Colonel François de la Rocque (1885–1946): leading figure of the extreme right who led the Croix de Feu, an anti-Marxist and anti-capitalist group. It was banned but reconstituted as the Parti Social Français (1936–40). He was anti-German and did not become a collaborator. See also ‘Diary of Events’, 8.6.39.

28

Cleuh: (also spelt Chleuh by Orwell; sometimes spelt as Shleuh and Shluh. Orwell’s different spellings are reproduced here); a Berber ethnic group living chiefly in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. See Orwell’s reference to their speaking ‘their own Berber dialect’ and that they ‘all speak Arabic’ in his Moroccan Diary for January 27, 1939.

29

Leon Blum (1872–1950) was the first Socialist premier of France, 1936–37, 1938, presiding over a popular front government. He was imprisoned in France and Germany from 1942 until the end of World War II, and was again premier, 1946–47.

30

The previous cylinder lasted five weeks; see 11.24.38.

31

Frs. 400: approximately £2.35 at the time (say £90 at today’s values).

32

P.S.F.: Parti Social Français: see n. 27.

33

in the other diary: Orwell’s Morocco Diary (it and the Domestic Diary are here intercalated).

34

Williams: almost certainly an American serving in the French Foreign Legion, described in the Moroccan Diary for March 12, 1939. He is probably one of the group of three illustrated in The Lost Orwell, plate 16.

35

bacon & eggs: according to Geoffrey Grigson, The Englishman’s Flora, a Somerset name for the water crowfoot (Ranunculus fluitans); and a Wiltshire name for toadflax (Linaria vulgaris). Possibly also the bulbous buttercup.

36

anchusa, bird’s eye: Grigson gives bird’s eye as a popular name for sixteen plants.

37

The legionaries are illustrated, and also some of the women Orwell describes in his Diary, in The Lost Orwell, Plates 11–16 and pp. 240–1.

38

James Maxton (1885–1946), an Independent Labour MP, 1922–46; Chairman of the ILP, 1926–31, 1934–39. He approved in Parliament on September 28, 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s announcement that Hitler had agreed to a four-power conference at Munich.

39

NYK: Nippon Yusen Kaisha (Japanese Mail Steamer Co.). Yasukuni means ‘peaceful country’; the Company’s ships were named after shrines and this shrine is dedicated to the souls of soldiers killed in wars in and after the Meiji Restoration. As such it has attracted unwelcome attention in recent years. The ship was sunk by the US submarine Trigger on January 31, 1944, whilst on passage from Yokosuka to Truk. (Information provided by Professor Akihiro Yamada.)

40

Orwell crossed the Bay of Biscay on the way to Burma and then twice more on passage to and from Morocco. We know from his review of The Civilization of France by Ernst Robert Curtius (May 1932) that ‘A few days before Sacco and Vanzetti were executed [August 22, 1927] I was standing on the steps of one of the English banks in Marseilles’ (CW, X, p. 244).

41

Later addition: (morning of 30th) (in dock about 9 am = 87 hours Casa–dock.)

42

Marx : the Orwells’ dog – see n. 1.

43

Titley: a neighbour.

44

M: Muriel, Orwell’s goat. Crick, plate 19, shows Orwell feeding her. Muriel is, of course, the name of the goat in Animal Farm.

45

Tom Ridley: a neighbour (Orwell spells his surname ‘Ridly’).

46

Mrs. Anderson: a neighbour who ‘did’ for the Orwells. According to Monica Bald in Remembering Orwell, p.115, Mrs Anderson used to say she was sure he was a writer because he got money every now and again by cheque, and then Eileen would say, ‘We all got paid’.

47

Greenwich; Miller Hospital: The references to Greenwich, where Eileen’s brother, Dr Laurence O’Shaughnessy lived, the Miller Hospital, and Eileen writing the Diary, may indicate that Orwell was undergoing tests under O’Shaughnessy’s direction; he may even have been an in-patient for a day or two. See reference to pigeon nest ‘outside hospital window’ 5.9.39 and ‘owing to illness’, 5.21.39. Laurence, confusingly, was also referred to as ‘Eric’.

48

Mr A. : Probably Mr Anderson, a Wallington neighbour.

49

The gardener here: presumably at the O’Shaugnessy’s or Greenwich Park.

50

the Zoo : the London Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park.

51

to cross a lion & a tiger: the Zoo was successful in breeding a tigon. (Tigons are found in the wild.)

52

Got back yesterday: to The Stores, Wallington.

1

Mr. N.: probably Mr Nicholls, a neighbour who kept goats and who, according to Orwell, had a ‘broken-down old wreck’ not suitable for mating with Muriel (see CW, XI, p. 261).

2

Albert H.: ‘H’ usually signifies ‘Old Hatchett’, see 6.13.39, so Albert H. may be another neighbour at Wallington, perhaps Albert Hollingsworth; see 8.21.39.

3

D. M.: Daily Mail; see 5.16.39 and 5.28.39.

4

sanfoin: This is the spelling of sainfoin favoured by Orwell . It means wholesome hay and is the perennial herb Onobrychis saliva or viciaefolia, a leguminous fodder plant sometimes known as everlasting grass or French grass. Orwell mentions it several times in Coming Up for Air, for example, ‘My favourite place for reading was the loft behind the yard. . . . . There were huge piles of sacks to lie on, and a sort of plastery smell mixed up with the smell of sanfoin . . .’ (CW. VII, p. 92).

5

Old H.: Old Hatchett, a neighbour.

6

R.I.R.: Rhode Island Red hens.

7

Albertine rose: This is the rose that Orwell bought from Woolworth’s for sixpence. He wrote about it in ‘As I Please’, 8, January 21, 1944 (CW, XVI, pp. 78 and 79. n.3). It was still flourishing some fifty years later.

8

Mrs R.: Probably Mrs Ridley, a neighbour.

1

Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), first mentioned some thousand years ago as part of Poland, has since been variously Polish and German (including Prussian). It was made a Free City by the Treaty of Versailles (1919), but became a focus of dispute between Poland and Germany, especially after the rise of the Nazis. This was the pretext for the German invasion of Poland that initiated World War II in 1939.

2

This is probably an error for NCL (National Council of Labour); see Events, 7.15.39, Party Politics, 2. The sense is elliptical, but seems to refer to an appeal to the German people under the heading ‘Why kill each other?’ made by the NCL. Summaries were broadcast by the BBC on the night of Saturday, July 1, 1939, in German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The NCL also arranged broadcasts to German workers from secret radio stations on the Continent and distributed printed copies of the appeal through underground organisations.

3

Archibald Sinclair (1890–1970; 1st Viscount Thurso, 1952), Liberal M.P., 1922–45, was a close friend of Winston Churchill and became political private secretary to him when the latter was Colonial Secretary, 1921–23. He served as Secretary of State for Scotland, 1931–32 but came to disapprove strongly of government policies associated with Chamberlain, and sided with Churchill and Eden. He attacked Chamberlain’s policy strongly in July 1939; and this developed into a bitter argument, centring on the refusal of The Times to print Sinclair’s rejoinder; see Events, 7.12. 39, Social. He was Secretary of State for Air in Churchill’s wartime coalition government.

4

John Ramsay Muir (1872–1941) was Professor of Modern History at the University of Manchester, 1913–21, and politician, first as a Liberal, and from 1931, after the split within the party, as a National Liberal. He was Chairman and President successively of the National Liberal Federation, 1931–36.

5

Leopold Charles Maurice Amery (1873–1955), Conservative M.P., opposed disarmament and supported the Hoare-Laval proposals for resolving the Abyssinian crisis in 1935. In May 1940, after the fall of Norway to the Germans, he directed, at Chamberlain, Cromwell’s words to the Long Parliament (1640–53): ‘You have sat too long here for any good you may be doing. . . . In the name of God, go!’ His My Political Life (1953–55) gives an account of political events of the thirties.

6

Anthony Eden, (1897–1977; Earl of Avon, 1961), Conservative M.P., was Foreign Secretary, 1935–38. He resigned to protest against Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. In 1940 he was Secretary of State for War, then Foreign Secretary in the War Cabinet, 1940–45. He was Prime Minister, 1955–57, but resigned again, as a result of Britain’s disastrous involvement in the occupation of the Suez Canal Zone in 1956.

7

Sir Stafford Cripps (1889–1952), lawyer (in 1927 becoming the youngest King’s Counsel) and Labour politician, entered Parliament in 1931, but was expelled from the Labour Party from 1939 to 1945. He was Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1940–42; Minister of Aircraft Production, 1942–45, and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour government, 1947–50. See Orwell’s War-time Diary 6.8.40, regarding his appointment as ambassador. See also 6.14.41, n. 184 and 3.14.42, n. 1.

8

Dr. Leslie Burgin (1887–1945), lawyer and Liberal (later National Liberal) M.P. from 1930, was Minister of Transport, 1937–39, and Minister of Supply, 1939–40. In A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers (1977), Harold Wilson, who worked in the Ministry of Supply for a short time in 1940, remarked that ‘its organization under Burgin’s ministerial direction would not have been capable of running a chip-shop’ (233).

1

Manchukuo was a puppet kingdom of Manchuria when occupied by the Japanese, 1932–45. It was restored to China in 1945.

1

Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965), politician, soldier, journalist, author, held high office in Liberal and Conservative governments over nearly half a century, but in the thirties was excluded because of his vigorous opposition to appeasement of dictators; he was branded a warmonger. He was the natural choice for prime minister after the fall of Norway following the German invasion in 1940. Despite his success as a war leader, he was not returned to office in 1945, but he did become prime minister of a peacetime government, 1951–55.

2

Daily Telegraph’s.

1

John McGovern (1887–1968), Independent Labour Party M.P., 1930–47; Labour M.P., 1947–59, led a hunger march from Glasgow to London in 1934.

2

Labour Party.

1

The International Federation of Trade Unions, established in 1901, had failed to survive World War I. Re-established in 1919, it came into conflict with the Soviet-inspired Red International of Labour Unions. Failure to reconcile differences between Communist and non-Communist trade unions continued after World War II. British, Soviet, and U.S. unions combined briefly to establish the World Federation of Trade Unions, but in 1949 the non-Communist unions broke away to form the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. The news item above is indicative of fundamental disagreement lasting over many decades.

1

Air Raid Precautions.

2

Julien Besteiro (properly Julián) (1870–1940), President of the UGT (Socialist Trade Union, Spain) to 1931, was Speaker of the Cortes (the Spanish Parliament) and temporarily President of Spain the same year. He died in prison in 1940, while serving the thirty-year sentence imposed by Franco’s government (hence Orwell’s asterisked note).

3

Colonel Sigismundo Casado López (1893–1968), commander of the Republican Army of the Centre, organised the campaign against Republican Prime Minister Negrín and attempted, towards the end of the civil war, to gain better terms from Franco. He failed and took refuge in Britain, though he later returned to Spain.

9

Edie W.: Edie was Mrs Ridley’s daughter. The ‘W’ stands for her husband Stanley’s surname.

1

Genevieve Tabouis (Paris, 1892–1985) was a diplomatic and international journalist, foreign news editor of L’Oeuvre from 1932, and correspondent for the Sunday Dispatch. On June 23, 1940 that paper printed her account of her escape to England via Bordeaux after the fall of Paris. This began with a statement attributed to Hitler: ‘The speech I am making to-day she knew yesterday.’ She directed the weekly Pour la Victoire, in New York, 1941–45, and was noted for her uncanny gift for forecasting accurately the outcome of political events.

1

As part of the precautions against air attack, windows had to be completely covered to ensure no light could be seen from the street, street-lights were turned off, and essential lights (such as car headlights and traffic lights) were masked. For a brief but eloquent account of the psychological effect of the blackout, see Malcolm Muggeridge, The Thirties, p. 305. He notes that after two months of war the number of casualties caused by the blackout was nearly twice that of all three services combined. See Events, 8.10.39, Social, 4.

2

Orwell first wrote ‘have been.’

3

War Office. The practice of separating friends, especially from the same locality, was designed to ensure that if a unit suffered heavy losses they were not all felt in the same town or city. This policy was adopted following the terrible casualties inflicted at the Battle of the Somme (July–October 1916), when units of men from the same place (e.g., the Exeter Boys) trained together, went into action together, and were then almost wiped out in a few moments, so intensifying the grief felt at home. The effect of the deaths of the five Sullivan brothers when U.S.S . Juneau was sunk, November 13, 1942, provides a similar Second World War example.

4

Béla Kun (1886–1939?), Communist revolutionary leader in Hungary, and briefly its Commissar for Foreign Affairs and dominant figure in the government in 1919. After fleeing from Hungary he tried, as a member of the Third International, to foment revolution in Germany and Austria. He fell out of favour and was murdered in one of Stalin’s purges. For a later report of his execution, see Events, 8.7.39, Party Politics, 2.

10

T.: Perhaps Mr Titley.

1

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was associated with appeasement of Hitler and Mussolini in the thirties. His stance was probably that of most British citizens, including many who were, with hindsight, to criticise him. J. L. Garvin (1868–1947), right-wing editor of The Observer (1908–42), argued on New Year’s Day, 1939, that ‘Mr. Chamberlain was a thousand times right in saving the world’s peace at Munich even at the price exacted’ (quoted by Robert Kee, a friend of Orwell’s, The World We Left Behind, 1984, p. 8). Eileen Blair commented in a letter of September 27, 1938, ‘It’s very odd to feel that Chamberlain is our only hope, but I do believe he doesn’t want war either at the moment & certainly the man has courage’ (CW, XI, p. 206).

2

The Belomor-Baltic Canal connecting Archangel and Leningrad. It was constructed by slave labour in 1931–33 and runs for some 140 miles, saving a sea journey of 2,500 miles. It was built by a quarter of a million prisoners, nearly 200,000 of whom died or were executed.

3

Henry Havelock Ellis (1859–1939), psychologist, editor, and author, noted particularly for his work on sex in relation to society. Orwell was to review his My Life (1939) in May 1940; see CW, XII, pp. 154–6.

1

The Italian government expelled foreigners from the frontier province of Bolzano. According to Signor Giuseppe Bastiniani, Italian Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, foreigners of all nations were included in the decree, and the motive was ‘political and military.’ Those most affected were 200 to 300 Swiss, many of them hotel owners. They were forced to sell, and the lire in which they were paid could not be taken out of Italy.

2

John Alfred Spender (1862–1942), an ‘old and respected Liberal’ (as the joint letter referred to described him), had attacked Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberal Party, for ‘assaulting the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in unmeasured terms and holding him up to odium as an incompetent man of infirm purpose.’ The joint letter, signed first by Lady Violet Bonham Carter (see Events, 7.14.39, n. 1) followed by eight others, claimed that Sinclair’s speech did not bear that interpretation. However, it went on, it was doubted by many (not only those in the Labour and Liberal parties) whether adequate means were being taken ‘to convince the outside world that we are unanimous, and that our Government is in earnest.’

1

The Times, in a second leader defending its action, referred also to ‘the now familiar clamour . . . for the instant inclusion of Mr. Churchill in the Cabinet,’ clamour from which ‘The Times has steadily held aloof.’ It felt ‘intensely that Mr. Churchill may well be needed in a Government again’ but that ‘His friends have already done him infinite harm.’ Orwell is correct in recording that no ‘contradicting’ letters were published by The Times on July 13, but a number were published on other days.

2

Independent Labour Party, founded in 1893 by Keir Hardie (see Events, 8.17.39. n. 3), was older than the Labour Party, which was formed by the ILP and trade unions in 1900. Orwell was a member of the ILP; see his ‘Why I Join the I.L.P.,’ The New Leader, June 24, 1938, CW, XI, pp. 167–9. At this time, the ILP and the Labour Party had split and were separately represented in the House of Commons. See Crick, p. 255, for some account of the character of the ILP; and Events, 8.10.39, Party Politics, 2. For subdivisions within the ILP, see CW, XI, pp. 362–3.

1

Lady Violet Bonham Carter (1897–1969), daughter of H. H. Asquith, Liberal Prime Minister, 1908–16, and a considerable force in the Liberal Party, was a member of Churchill’s group Focus on Defence of Freedom and Peace, 1936–39.

1

Commander Stephen King-Hall (1893–1966) retired from the Royal Navy in 1929. He was elected to Parliament, as an Independent-National, in 1939. In 1936 he started the K-H News Service Letter (as National News Letter from 1941). Right-wing and outspoken, he was well regarded as a political commentator for his personal interpretation of events.

2

Peace Pledge Union, publishers of Peace News, founded 1934. Max Plowman (1883–1941) was an ardent supporter and its general secretary, 1937–38. Orwell contributed a review to Peace News, CW, XI, pp. 322–4. Plowman had served in the First World War and published a memoir, A Subaltern on the Somme. He also wrote An Introduction to the Study of Blake and The Faith Called Pacifism. His wife, Dorothy, was one of Orwell’s life-long friends.

3

No Conscription League.

4

The annual cricket game between these schools, held early in June at Lord’s Cricket Ground, London. Orwell had been co-editor of a special issue of College Days for this match in 1920; see CW, X, pp. 53–4. For the outcome of this match see Events, 7.16.39, Miscellaneous. Lord’s Cricket Ground had a capacity of about 25,000, achieved only on special occasions.

1

Captain Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart (1895–1970) was a writer of more than thirty books, including History of the Second World War (1970). He had been military correspondent to the Daily Telegraph, 1925–35, and to The Times, 1935–39, and military editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 14th edition, 1929. In 1937 he was personal adviser to the Minister of War. He then wrote infantry training manuals and edited the series The Next War, 6 vols. (1938). Orwell wrote of him, ‘The two military critics most favoured by the intelligentsia are Captain Liddell Hart and Major-General Fuller, the first of whom teaches that the defence is stronger than the attack, and the second that the attack is stronger than the defence. This contradiction has not prevented both of them from being accepted as authorities by the same public. The secret reason for their vogue in left-wing circles is that both of them are at odds with the War Office’; see ‘Notes on Nationalism,’ [October] 1945, CW, XVII, pp. 141–57.

2

Right-wing newspapers owned by Lord Beaverbrook, which included the Daily Express, Sunday Express, and Evening Standard. See Orwell’s ‘London Letter’ of April 15, 1941, CW, XII, pp. 470–9.

3

In the annual cricket match between Eton and Harrow, the latter had a notable victory, winning by eight wickets (Harrow 294 and 131 for two; Eton 268 and 156). The front page of the Sunday Express carried a story prominently displayed and headed: ‘Worst Hat-Bashing for Years / Our ‘Gentlemen’ enjoy themselves.’ It states, ‘Top hats were torn to shreds, umbrellas broken in pieces, ties torn up – and even trousers taken off.’ It concludes: ‘There have not been such scenes since the 1919 match’ (when Orwell was at Eton), ‘which resulted in a warning that the fixture would be cancelled if fighting occurred again.’

1

Tsingtao (now Qingdao), port in northern China, built to rival Tientsin (Tianjin) in 1930s, occupied by the Japanese, 1938–45. See Events, 7.24.39, n. 1.

2

Communist Party.

1

B. H. Liddell Hart’s Defence of Britain was published in 1939. Leslie Hore-Belisha (1893–1957), politician, barrister, and journalist (especially for the Beaverbrook press), was a Liberal M.P., 1923–45, and was instrumental in 1931 in organising the National Liberal Party to support the ‘National Government’ led by Stanley Baldwin (Conservative) and Ramsay MacDonald (Labour). He served as Secretary to the Board of Trade and then as Minister of Transport, 1934–37. In 1937, Chamberlain appointed him Secretary of State for War, charging him with the task of modernising the armed forces; he served until 1940; see Events, 7.29.39, Miscellaneous, n. 3.

1

Large numbers of children were dispersed from cities to country areas for safety from air attack. Many stayed in their adopted homes for the duration of the war. See also Events, 8.29.39, Foreign & General, 3; 8.31.39, Foreign & General; 9.1.39, Foreign & General, 2.

2

Leading French Communist daily newspaper.

3

War Office.

4

A serviceman could, with permission, reduce the time he had agreed to serve at his enlistment by buying his release. The practice continues today.

1

Witold Budziewicz, a Polish customs officer, was shot dead shortly after being challenged by a Danzig customs officer accompanied by two Nazis. At the time, it was not known who fired the shot. This was one of a number of incidents designed to increase tension in the area in order to provide Hitler with a pretext for intervention.

2

Executive Committee; for divisions within the ILP, see headnote to Events.

1

Dr. Helmut Wohltat, Economic Adviser to Hermann Goering, was visiting Britain for a conference on whaling. He undoubtedly also had discussions with R. S. Hudson of the Department of Overseas Trade. It is now known that each was acting on his own initiative, but suspicions were aroused. Prime Minister Chamberlain categorically denied to the House of Commons on July 24 that anything more was involved than informal discussion on matters of joint interest, and assured the House that no proposal for a loan had been made.

2

General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano y Serra (1875–1951) had commanded Franco’s Army of the South. Though a Republican, he accepted the title of marquis in 1947. See also Events, 7.23.39, Party Politics, 1, for the reason for his dismissal from his post as Inspector-General of the Carabineros.

3

Coming Up for Air. Orwell’s surprise was occasioned by the way the Daily Worker had attacked him in 1937; see letter to Victor Gollancz, August 20, 1937, CW, XI, pp. 72–4

1

Queipo had been a member of Spain’s National Council in 1937 but was left out of Franco’s cabinet early in 1938. See Thomas, pp. 750, 752–54, and 948, n. 2.

2

The National Liberals were close allies of the Conservatives in Baldwin’s and Chamberlain’s governments. By standing in an election against a Conservative candidate, the National Liberals would split the pro-government vote. See Events, 8.4.39, Party Politics, 1.

3

Charles Grey (1875–?), a journalist with a special interest in aeronautical matters, founded The Aeroplane in 1911 and edited it until 1939, when he became air correspondent for several newspapers. He wrote a number of books on aircraft and edited All the World’s Aircraft, 1916–41.

4

Claud Cockburn, in his pro-Communist journal, The Week, described The Aeroplane as ‘frankly pro-Nazi.’ See Events, 8.4.39, n. 1.

1

Tientsin (Tianjin) was a port in northern China where Britain and France had been granted Concessions by a treaty of 1858, which were extended later to Germany and Japan. It was occupied by the Japanese, 1937–45, but guerrilla and ‘terrorist’ resistance continued. In one incident, when the Chinese manager of the Japanese-sponsored Federal Reserve Bank was killed, and the Japanese were looking for four Chinese believed to be responsible for this, the Chinese took refuge in the British Concession. When the British refused to hand them over, the Japanese blockaded the British and French Concessions, starting on June 14, 1939. Supplies were admitted only after careful search. It was reported in The Times, July 15, 1939, that milk was at last being allowed into the Concession. See Events, 8.1.39, Foreign & General, 3, and 8.18.39, Social, 1.

1

National Union of Journalists.

2

Trades Union Congress. It was founded in 1868, to represent all unions that chose to be affiliated to it.

3

Colonel Blanco de Yagüe (1891–1952) was a successful Nationalist commander. Thomas reports that at a Falangist banquet on April 19, 1938, he praised the fighting qualities of the Republicans, and described the allies of the Nationalists, the Germans and Italians, as ‘beasts of prey’ (p. 819).

4

Maxim Litvinov (1876–1951) represented the Soviet Union abroad in many capacities from 1917, when he was unacknowledged Ambassador to Britain, to 1941–43, when he served as Ambassador to the United States. A Jew and a prominent anti-Nazi, who had recommended collective action against Hitler, he was dismissed as Commissar of Foreign Affairs on May 3, 1939.

1

But see Events, 8.1.39, Party Politics, 1.

2

William Gallacher (1881–1965), Communist M.P. 1935–50. Dennis Noel Pritt (1887–1972), lawyer, author, and Labour M.P., 1935–40. Following policy disagreements, Pritt was expelled from the Labour Party, and was an Independent Socialist M.P. until 1950. A fervent supporter of left-wing causes and of the Soviet Union, in 1954 he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize. Orwell had little love for Pritt; see his letter to Humphry House, April 11, 1940, CW, XII, pp.139–42 and Vol. XX, p. 253).

1

The Military Training Act permitted the call-up of men for military service and allowed for conscientious objection.

1

Ramon Serrano Suñer (1901–2003), brother-in-law of Franco and, as Minister of the Interior, second in importance to him, until dismissed in 1942. His experiences as a prisoner of the Republicans embittered him for life. As Thomas puts it, they were such ‘as to make him close his eyes to pity’ (p. 924, and see pp. 633–34).

2

Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903–1944), Italian Foreign Minister, visited Spain in July 1939 and reported (as quoted by Thomas, p. 924): ‘trials going on every day at a speed which I would call almost summary. . . . There are still a great number of shootings. In Madrid alone, between 200 and 250 a day, in Barcelona 150, in Seville 80.’ Thomas comments, ‘Seville had been in nationalist Spain throughout the war: how could there be still enough people to shoot at this rate?’ In 1944 it was reported that 193,000 people had been executed, but Thomas suggests this might be the number of death sentences, some of which were commuted, or that it includes those executed during the war (p. 925).

3

Infantry regiments formed up in four ranks until the 1937 reforms instituted by Secretary of State for War, Hore-Belisha (see Events, 7.19.39, Party Politics, 1.) Among them were changes in army drill to simplify the often complicated movements and so speed the process of training. The change Orwell notes here is forming up in three ranks, a practice still followed. Hore-Belisha’s reforms also included the introduction of battle dress and the abolition of puttees.

1

See Events, 8.30.39, Social, 1. for adjournment of Parliament.

2

Edouard Daladier (1884–1970), Socialist Prime Minister of France, 1938–40; see Morocco Diary, n. 13.

1

Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurley Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax (1880–1967), Commander-in-Chief, The Nore, 1939–41, was accompanied by a representative of the Army and one of the Royal Air Force. Although a talented man, he was ill-briefed for this mission and was subjected to ridicule in Moscow, Voroshilov pointedly referring to his being a Knight Commander of the ‘Bath’. He signed himself simply as ‘Drax’ (William Wilson). He was the author of the Handbook of Solar Heating (J. Looker, Poole, 1965; three editions).

2

See Events, 7.24.39, Foreign & General, 3, and 8.18.39, Social, 1.

3

One of the three divisions of India when administered by the East India Company; the others were Bengal and Madras. The titles were continued after the East India Company was superseded.

4

Partido Obrero de Unificatión Marxista was the Revolutionary Communist Party of Spain, anti-Stalinist. Orwell fought with it in Spain. See Homage to Catalonia, CW, VI, especially Appendix II, for the attempt by the Communist Party to eradicate the POUM.

1

This speech, in the House of Commons, July 31, announced that a mission was to go to Moscow for discussions with Soviet authorities on military matters. It reiterated the government’s aim, summarised in The Times, August 1, as ‘peace with justice; its method . . . the formation of the “Peace Front.” ’

2

C. W.: Probably from Cyril Wright. He and his girl-friend, Mikeal Smith, were friends of Orwell’s and they frequently drove over from Bedford, where he lived, to Wallington to discuss books. Wright worked as a salesman for his father, a sweet manufacturer, from 1937–39. He later became a salesman for Dean’s, the manufacturer of shop blinds. It is possible that Orwell gained some knowledge of a salesman’s life from Wright which was helpful to him when writing Coming Up for Air as well as from John Sceats . He was not a member of the ILP and once canvassed for the Labour Party.

3

Dr. Juan Negrín (1889–1956) was Socialist Prime Minister of the Republic of Spain, September 1936–March 1938. He fled to France, where he died in exile. Indalecio Prieto y Tuero (1883–1962), Socialist Minister of National Defence in Negrín’s cabinet, died in exile in Mexico.

4

Either Orwell’s friend Richard Rees or Reginald Reynolds (1905–1958), journalist and author, Quaker and pacifist, who supported the non-Communist Republicans in Spain and was a brilliant speaker for the ILP .

5

Josiah Clement Wedgwood (1872–1943; Baron, 1942), M.P. for Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1906–42, first as a Liberal, later for Labour; was Vice-Chairman of the Labour Party, 1921–24.

1

The Week was a private-circulation, ostensibly independent but pro-Communist newsletter edited by Claud Cockburn (Frank Pitcairn; 1904–81), Communist journalist. In March 1938 he helped fabricate a news story that there had been a military uprising against Franco in Tetuán in Northern Morocco. This Communist propaganda was designed to give the impression that Franco might still be defeated and so persuade the French to open their border: see Thomas, p. 805, n. 3. He was implacably opposed to the POUM, with whom Orwell had fought in Spain. In a posthumously broadcast TV interview for Arena in 1984, he said, ‘Any damage I could do them I would do. Certainly. No bones about it at all. In the same way after all you are prepared to shoot people with a gun. Well then – as in my case, the typewriter was somewhat more mighty than the rifle’. See his Reporter in Spain, 1936, and Crossing the Line, 1956 (which refers to the Teután fraud, pp. 27–8). The Week was published from March 29, 1933, to January 15, 1941, when it was suppressed by government order. A new series was allowed from October 1942, and it ran until December 1946. See his The Years of The Week (1968), pp. 262–64.

2

This opaque summary refers to side-effects of the Munich pact. For sense, it should read ‘to Hungary.’ As Churchill summarised it, after Munich, ‘A formal division of the spoils was made by Germany at the beginning of November. Poland was not disturbed in her occupation of Teschen [an area of Silesia opportunely seized by Poland]. The Slovaks, who had been used as a pawn by Germany, obtained a precarious autonomy. Hungary received a piece of flesh at the expense of Slovakia’ (The Second World War, I, p. 298).

3

Geoffrey Mander (1882–1962; Kt., 1945) was a Liberal M.P., 1929–45.

4

“The Link”: see Events, 8.6.39, Party Politics, n. 6.

5

Sir Samuel Hoare (1880–1959; Viscount Templewood, 1944) Conservative, was appointed foreign secretary in June 1935, but resigned in December because of opposition to his plan to settle the Abyssinian crisis. In June 1936 he became First Lord of the Admiralty and later Home Secretary. A supporter of the Munich pact, he fell with Chamberlain in May 1940. Later, as Ambassador to Spain, he negotiated the release from Spanish gaols of some 30,000 Allied prisoners and refugees.

6

See Events, 7.23.39, Party Politics, 2 and n. 2.

7

The Albatross Continental Library was a German publishing house which circulated books in English in paperback on the Continent. Although Albatross was a German firm, Orwell’s contract for the publication of Coming Up for Air was drawn up in Paris. The contract stipulated that the book was to be issued before August 1940. See War-time Diary, 6.15.40.

8

Unidentified.

1

The Sudetenland, parts of Moravia and Bohemia incorporated into Czechoslovakia by the Treaty of Versailles, led by the Sudeten German Party, under Konrad Henlein (1898–1945, by suicide) wanted to reunite with Germany. It was aided and abetted by Hitler. The Munich pact of September 30, 1938, required Czechoslovakia to cede the area to Germany by October 10, 1938.

2

Peter Howard (1908–1965), author, journalist, dramatist, and farmer, was political columnist for Express Newspapers (Beaverbrook group), 1933–41.

3

Walter Runciman (1870–1949; Viscount, 1937), a Liberal M.P., 1899–1931, then a National Liberal, held many offices, including President of the Board of Trade, 1914–16, 1931–37. He led a mission to Czechoslovakia in 1938. David Lloyd George (1863–1945; Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor, 1944), elected M.P. for Caernarfon, 1890; Chancellor of the Exchequer 1908–15; Minister for Munitions, 1915; Secretary of State for War 1916; and Prime Minister 1916–22. He had, like Pétain, been cast as a heroic leader during World War I when he proved an effective Prime Minister. He was responsible for persuading the Royal Navy to adopt the convoy system to help protect ships from German U-boats in the Atlantic. He was in a minority in seeking a conciliatory peace treaty with Germany after the war. When Chancellor of the Exchequer he introduced old-age pensions and national insurance, precursors to the welfare state. Many pensioners between the wars would speak of ‘collecting their Lloyd George’ – their old-age pension. Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947; Earl Baldwin, 1937), was Conservative Prime Minister three times, 1923–24,1924–29,1935–37. He successfully negotiated the crisis occasioned by the abdication of King Edward VIII, but is generally blamed for Britain’s failure to prepare adequately for the impending war. For Samuel Hoare, see Events, 8.4.39, n. 5. Sir John Simon (1873–1954; Viscount, 1940) entered the House of Commons as a Liberal in 1906, and was instrumental in forming the National Liberal Party in 1931. He was Foreign Secretary, 1931–35; served at the Home Office, 1935–37, was Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1937–40, and Lord Chancellor, 1940–45. He wanted to avoid entanglements on the Continent. For Winston Churchill, see Events, 7.5.39, n. 1.

4

Sir Arnold Wilson (1884–1940) was Conservative M.P. for Hitchin, 1933–40, and Chairman of the Home Office Committee on Structural Precautions against Air Attack, 1936–38.

5

Oswald Mosley was head of the British Union of Fascists; see Wigan Pier Diary, n. 37.

6

‘The Link’ was avowedly an Anglo-German cultural and friendship association. See Events, 8.4.39, Social; 8.7.39, Party Politics.

7

Colonel Francois de la Rocque: see Morocco Diary, n. 27.

8

Edouard Daladier: see Morocco Diary, n. 13.

1

Parti Socialiste Ouvriers et Paysans, a left-wing splinter group of the Socialist Party (SFIO, Section Française de l’International Ouvrière); see Events, 8.11.39, n. 3.

2

See Events, 7.10.39, n. 4.

3

Admiral Sir Barry Edward Domvile (1878–1971) retired from the Navy in 1936.

4

See Events, 8.4.39, Social.

5

A statement made inside the House of Commons is privileged, and an action for slander or libel cannot be prosecuted.

6

A headline in Lord Beaverbrook’s newspaper, the Daily Express, for August 7 boldly proclaimed, ‘No War this Year.’

1

Miners in Asturia, in the north of Spain, had organised revolution in 1934 (see Thomas, pp. 136ff). A feature there during the Spanish civil war, in September and October 1937, was Germany’s practice of ‘carpet bombing,’ regardless of civilians below. Although Franco’s forces were successful in obtaining for the Nationalists the coal resources of the region, guerrilleros continued to fight there until 1948 (Thomas, pp. 728–33).

2

The full title of the book, by Ivan Lajos, published by Gollancz in August 1939, was Germany’s War Chances: As Pictured in German Official Literature.

3

Leonard Merrick (1864–1939), born Miller, was a novelist, now almost forgotten, but in 1918 a collected edition of his novels was published in which each was introduced by a distinguished author. He was described by Sir James Barrie as ‘the novelist’s novelist,’ and William Dean Howells put him next in stature to Jane Austen. The Position of Peggy Harper (1911) was to be reissued in the Century Library series, and Orwell wrote an introduction to it. A page proof survives, dated 1948, though Orwell probably wrote the introduction in 1945; see CW, XVIII, pp. 216–19. The volume was never issued. See Crick, p. 500.

1

Eggs, the official organ of the Scientific Poultry Breeders’ Association, as a weekly founded in 1919. Orwell had been corresponding with the Association about feed for his hens around July 26–27, 1939.

2

See Events, 7.13.39, Party Politics, for the Labour Party’s refusal of conditional affiliation.

1

Menna Schocat was a pioneer revolutionary in tsarist Russia who suffered imprisonment and exile. She escaped in 1905 and went to Palestine, where she was active in various workers’ movements. She insisted on Jewish-Arab workers’ unity and championed the cause of Arab peasants. The ILP had proposed to work for the unity of Jewish and Arab masses against British imperialism, in the hope of setting up a workers’ state federated with neighbouring Arab states. It also championed the right of persecuted Jewish workers in Europe to enter not only Palestine, but all countries, including Britain and the Dominions.

2

Henry Woodd° Nevinson (1856–1941), prolific author, journalist, and foreign correspondent, was President of the Council for the Defence of Civil Liberties in 1939. Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell (1864–1945; Kt., 1929), an eminent zoologist, was responsible for rebuilding much of the London Zoo and for the creation of the ‘open’ zoological garden at Whipsnade. He retired to Málaga, but the civil war forced his return to England. Orwell reviewed his translation of The Forge, by Arturo Barea, in Time and Tide, June 28, 1941 (see CW, XII, pp. 518–19) and in Horizon, September 1941 (see CW, XIII, pp. 33–5). During World War II, Mitchell was Treasurer to the joint committee for Soviet aid. Alexander Gavin Henderson, 2nd Baron Faringdon (1902–1977), a contemporary of Orwell at Eton, was Treasurer of the Committee of Inquiry into Non-Intervention in Spain, 1936, and Treasurer of the National Council for Civil Liberties, 1940–45. Cecil Henry Wilson (1862–1945) was a Labour M.P., 1922–31, 1935–44. George Lansbury (1859–1940), Leader of the Labour Party, 1931–35, was a pacifist and resigned as leader on that issue. Andrew MacLaren (1883–1975) was an ILP M.P., 1922–23, 1924–31, 1935–45.

3

Lucien Weitz, editor of Independent News, published in Paris, was also associated with the journal of Solidaridad Internacional Antifascista, of which Orwell was a sponsor. Weitz and a number of others associated with that journal and with the ILP’s brother organisation in France, Parti Socialiste Ouvriers et Paysans (see Events, 8.7.39, n. I) and its journal, Juin 36, were imprisoned as a result of publishing articles exposing clandestine sales by French motor manufacturers to Germany, and antimilitarist tracts.

4

Robert Louzon was imprisoned with Lucien Weitz and others. Of the nine people named in The New Leader as being arrested, Orwell picks out these two names presumably because they were known to him personally or by their writings: Weitz in Independent News, and Louzon in La Revolution Prolétarienne or his book L’Economie Capitaliste.

1

On July 29, 1939, some 3,000 Soviet troops with 100 tanks attacked on a four-mile front centred on Changkufeng, about a hundred miles southwest of Vladivostock. They were forced back, losing approximately 400 men to about 120 lost by the Japanese. On August 6 the German and Italian ambassadors in Tokyo intervened to urge moderation by the Japanese to settle the dispute peacefully so the ‘Anti-Comintern Triangle’ would not become embroiled with Russia (The Times, August 9, 1939).

2

Obelisk Press, Paris, published books in English for sale on the Continent, some of which British authorities regarded as obscene. Their importation into England was liable to legal proceedings. See Jack Kahane’s Memoirs of a Booklegger (1939) and Neil Pearson, Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press, 2007.

3

Not traced. See Shelden, pp. 345–47; Bowker, p. 255.

1

Unidentified; possibly someone in the ILP.

2

Probably George Kopp, Orwell’s commander in Spain.

3

C. A. Smith was editor ofControversy, later Left Forum and then Left, a socialist monthly dedicated to the realisation of a classless society. He, with Orwell and others, urged that Rudolf Hess be interrogated at Nuremberg in 1946 regarding an alleged meeting with Trotsky; see Forward, February 25, 1946.

11

1½ lb: that is, one and a halfpence per pound.

1

This involved production of identity cards (without photographs for most people), to be carried at all times. The individual identification numbers are still in use in the 1990s for certain government purposes, although the cards disappeared long ago.

2

For Negrín and Prieto, see Events, 8.2.39, n. 3.

3

James Keir Hardie (1856–1915) was the first Socialist to be elected a Member of Parliament (1892). He led the Labour Party in the House of Commons, 1906–15.

4

Labour Party Executive Committee.

1

See Events, 7.24.39, n. 1. It was reported on August 12 that the government had decided that the four Chinese would be handed over to be tried by a Japanese-controlled court. It had been convinced by new evidence the Japanese had produced in Tokyo, after having refused to make it available in Tientsin. This entry and several thereafter are numbered in small roman numerals, as is ‘S.P. 1’ on occasion. These variations are not here recorded.

1

The German-American Bund was a Nazi front organization. Its leader, Fritz Kuhn, was imprisoned later in the year, having been found guilty in New York of embezzling the association’s funds.

1

See Events, 8.6.39, n. 2.

2

Orwell originally wrote ‘crisis’ for ‘period.’

1

American Institute of Public Opinion, which conducted polls popularly known as Gallup polls, after its founder, statistician George Gallup (1901–1984), beginning in 1935.

2

50/–: Fifty shillings – £2. 10s; roughly equivalent in 2009 to £100 per week at current purchasing power.

1

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) was German Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1938–45. He negotiated the Russo-German Non-Aggression Pact in 1939 with Molotov (see Events, 8.28.39, n. 4). He was hanged as a war criminal after being found guilty by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

2

See Events, 7.2.39, n. 2. Three months after note above, ‘German Freedom Radio’ was reported to be still broadcasting appeals to Germans to liberate themselves from Hitler’s regime.

3

The Letchworth Citizen was Orwell’s local paper at Wallington.

4

See Events, 8.6.39, n. 4.

5

International Communist Opposition, headquartered in Paris. The decline of the ICO was the subject of the July Supplement of Socialist Correspondence.

6

August Thalheimer (1884–1948) was one of the leaders of the International Communist Opposition, and was described in the New Leader, August 20, 1937 (to which issue he contributed an article, ‘A Call for Revolutionary Socialist Unity’), as ‘one of the authors of the thesis which formed the basis of the Communist International at its establishment. For many years he was the leader of the Communist Party in Germany, but was deposed from that position by the C. I. Executive because he opposed its disastrous policy of dividing the Trade Union Movement by the formation of rival Red Trade Unions.’ The New Leader welcomed the chance to publish his views ‘because it indicates that there is scope for close co-operation between the parties (including the I.L.P.) attached to the International Bureau for Revolutionary Socialist Unity and the Communist International Opposition.’

7

Audrey Brockway (1916–1974) was Secretary to the I.L.P. Guild of Youth, and was married to Jim Wood, a member of the Trotskyist group in the I.L.P.

8

The Fourth International was formed in 1938 by followers of Trotsky. They hoped the impending war would create conditions favourable for world revolution. It was reported that as Trotsky lay dying in Mexico City in 1940, victim of an assassin, he said ‘I am sure of victory of the Fourth International. Go forward!’

1

Labour Party.

1

Presumably a file Orwell kept on this subject. Possibly related to his reference ‘File S.P. 1.’

2

Eileen was working at the War Office in the Censorship Department.

3

National news was broadcast by BBC at 6.00 p.m.

4

Archibald Sinclair; see Events, 7.2.39, n. 3. Arthur Greenwood (1880–1954) was a Labour M.P., 1922–31, 1932–54; Deputy Leader of the party, 1935; Secretary to the party research department, 1920–43. His opposition to totalitarian regimes led to his being singled out for attack by Hitler in 1938.

5

Geoffrey Mander; see Events, 8.4.39, n. 3.

6

James Maxton (1885–1946), Independent Labour MP, 1922–46; Chairman of I.L.P., 1926–31, 1934–39. See also Morocco Diary, 3.12.39, n. 38.

1

On August 24 Orwell travelled to Ringwood in Hampshire, where he stayed with novelist L. H. Myers (1891–1944). For Myers, see also Events, 8.29.39, n. 2. He was at Ringwood until August 31 at least. On September 3 he was in Greenwich, where the O’Shaugnessys lived. It is not possible to be sure where he was on September 1 and 2.

2

Sir Neville Henderson (1882–1942) was British Ambassador in Berlin, 1937–39. See his Failure of a Mission (1940).

3

Hitler’s.

4

Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986) was President of the USSR’s Council of People’s Commisars, 1930–41, and Commissar of Foreign Affairs, 1939–49, 1953–56. He negotiated the Russo-German Non-Aggression Pact in August 1939, with Ribbentrop. He was later a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly.

5

Orwell originally wrote ‘Communist.’

6

This must be L. H. Myers, with whom Orwell was staying. Myers was a Communist, as was the source of his information. See G. H. Bantock, L. H. Myers, p. 152 .

7

In January 1939 the price of gold was 150s 5d (£7.52). By June it had dropped to 148s 6d. In January 1940 it was 168s (£8.40). An official price was in effect from June 1945 (172s 3d) until the free market reopened in March 1954, when the price was 248s (£12.40); see R.L. Bidwell, Currency Conversion Tables (1970). There were $4.63 to the pound in January 1939; from January 1940 to September 1949 the rate was $4.03. The pound was then devalued and was worth about $2.80 until 1967.

8

James Maxton; see Morocco Diary, 3.12.39, n. 38; George Lansbury and Cecil Wilson; see Events, 8.11.39, n. 2.

9

William Gallacher; see Events, 7.27.39, n. 2.

10

Ellen Wilkinson (1891–1947), founder member of the Communist Party, 1920; elected Labour MP, 1924–31. Re-elected for Jarrow in 1933 and in 1936 organised the march of the unemployed from Jarrow to London. With Clement Attlee she witnessed the German bombing of Valencia during the Spanish Civil War. See also Thomas, p. 792, n.2. She served in the Coalition Wartime Government and was appointed Minister of Education in the Labour Government of 1945. She wrote two novels and The Town that Was Murdered, an account of the Jarrow March. She was also famed for flaming red hair.

11

Aneurin (Nye) Bevan (1897–1960), a collier from Tredegar, was a Labour M.P. representing the Ebbw Vale constituency, South Wales, from 1927 until his death. An impassioned orator, he was the idol of much of the left and was disliked, even feared, by many Conservatives. As Minister of Health, 1945–50, he was responsible for the creation of the National Health Service. He resigned from the second post-war Labour government in 1951 in disagreement over disarmament, and was defeated as leader of the party in 1955. He was a director of Tribunewhen Orwell wrote for that journal, and allowed Orwell complete freedom to say what he wished even against current party policy. His In Place of Fear (1952) sets out his philosophy. See also Second War-time Diary, 3.27.42, n. 13.

1

Emergency Powers Act; see 8.28.39, last paragraph.

2

The local paper for Ringwood, where Orwell was staying with L. H. Myers, from at least August 24 to 31. As his diary shows, he was not back at Wallington until September 5, two days after Britain’s declaration of war following Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1. He may have gone to Greenwich on September 1 or 2, and was certainly there on September 3; see Events, 8.28.39, n. 1. It was Myers who had provided the loan (intended as a gift) that enabled the Orwells to spend the winter of 1938–39 in French Morocco. Orwell did not know who his benefactor was until 1946, two years after Myers’s death, when he made the first instalment on repaying what he took to be a debt. He sent this to Dorothy Plowman, who had acted as intermediary; see his letter to her, February 19, 1946 (CW, XVIII, pp. 115–16).

1

Harold Nicolson (1886–1968; Kt., 1953), diplomat (to 1929), biographer, and novelist, was an M.P., 1935–45. His Diaries and Letters (edited by his son Nigel Nicolson, 3 vols., 1966–68) give insight into the political life of the thirties. In his English History 1914–1945, A.J.P. Taylor records the wild scene that followed Chamberlain’s announcement in the House on September 28, 1938, that Hitler had agreed to a four-power conference at Munich: ‘Members rose to their feet, cheering and sobbing. Attlee [the Labour leader], Sinclair the Liberal leader, and Maxton of the I.L.P. blessed Chamberlain’s mission. Only Gallacher, the Communist, spoke harshly against it.’ In a footnote he asks, ‘Who remained seated?’ Certainly Gallacher and, quoting R. W. Seton-Watson, he adds Churchill, Eden, and Amery. Another source, J. W. Wheeler-Bennett, is quoted as saying that ‘Harold Nicolson, despite the threats of those surrounding him, remained seated.’ Taylor says that Nicolson remembered only being rebuked the next day by a Conservative M.P. for not rising. Nicolson, who had joined Mosley’s New Party in 1931, leaving the following year when the British Union of Fascists was formed, was a National Labour member of the government. (Revised Pelican edition, 1970, p. 525.)

1

Kliment Voroshilov (1881–1969), Marshal of the Soviet Union, was People’s Commissar for Defence, 1925–40, and President of the USSR, 1953–60. He was one of those responsible for organising the defence of Leningrad during the 900-day siege, September 1941–January 1944.

2

John Anderson (1882–1958; Viscount, 1952) was an MP. representing Scottish universities, 1938–50. (At the time, a few MPs were elected directly by universities.) Appointed Lord Privy Seal by Chamberlain in November 1938, with special responsibility for manpower and civil defence. He was responsible for what came to be called the ‘Anderson’ air-raid shelter. These were sited in back gardens. At the outbreak of war, he was made Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security; later, Lord President of the Council, 1940–43, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1943–45. In The Lion and the Unicorn, Orwell remarked that it took ‘the unnecessary suffering of scores of thousands of people in the East End [sheltering in Andersons] to get rid or partially rid of Sir John Anderson’ ( CW, XII, p. 416). The shelters could be extremely uncomfortable and were prone to flooding. On September 3, 1940, Churchill wrote to Anderson to say that ‘a great effort should be made to help people to drain their Anderson shelters, which reflect so much credit on your name . . .’ (The Second World War, I, p. 313).

3

Amalgamated Engineering Union.

4

See Events, 8.28.39, last paragraph.

1

The Polish Corridor, which gave Poland an outlet to the Baltic Sea between 1919 and 1939; it separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany and, with Danzig, was a source of friction and an ostensible cause of the outbreak of war.

2

Hitler.

1

Part of the air defence system was provided by barrage balloons. These were flown, unmanned, at a height that made dive-bombing to a low level impracticable owing to the cables anchoring the balloons in position.

2

Reynold’s News was founded May 5, 1850. It was a popular, Socialist-inclined Sunday newspaper. It was amalgamated with the Sunday Citizen under that name on August 20, 1944; the Citizen ceased publication on June 18, 1967.

3

Military Training Act.

12

‘Curing a Goat Skin’: Orwell may have had a particular interest in this subject in the light of his account of Flory’s disastrous attempt to have a leopard skin cured for Elizabeth Lackersteen in Burmese Days (CW, II, pp. 226–7). He would later cure skins successfuly on Jura.

13

9.25.39: presumably the date is underlined as a reminder. Orwell was away for the ten days before his diary entry for September 28 when he records planting sixty spring cabbages.

14

Mr N.: perhaps Mr Nicholls, the owner of the ‘broken-down old wreck’ of a male goat referred to by Orwell: see Diary, Volume II, n. 1 above.

15

I have been away: it is not known where Orwell was, nor what he had been doing. However, in his letter to Leonard Moore of October 6, 1939, he writes that Eileen had found a job in a government office (the Censorship Department in Whitehall), but ‘I have so far failed to do so’ (see CW, XI, p. 411). On September 9 he had offered his services to aid the war effort so perhaps he was seeking such work (see CW, XI, p. 410).

16

Coal was often in short supply during – and for long after – the war. Orwell attempted to make briquettes – see Diary, 10.6.39. It was possible to buy a mould to assist in doing this but the briquettes, though they glowed red quite comfortingly, gave out much less heat than even the poor quality coal distributed.

17

before the end of November: all items have been ticked except ‘Clean out & dig the patch where the fruit bushes have been’ and ‘Sow broad beans’, which are marked with a cross, ‘& the place where the fruit bushes have been’ and ‘Plant phloxes . .’ which are not marked at all.

18

Possibly also: the following two items are not marked with either a tick or cross.

19

Lydia Jackson (née Jiburtovitch, 1899–1983) was educated at Leningrad University, worked for the Society of Friends in Moscow, then came to England in 1925. She did not intend to stay permanently but in 1929 she married Meredith Jackson, a lecturer in law at Cambridge University; they divorced in 1935. She started studying psychology at University College London (where she and Eileen met in 1934 and became friends); she graduated in 1942 and was awarded a D.Phil by Oxford University in 1949. She then lectured in psychology and under her pen-name, Elisaveta Fen, translated Chekhov’s plays, 1951–54, published in a single Penguin volume in 1959. See her A Russian’s England (1976) for good accounts of Eileen, Wallington, and Eileen and Orwell’s relationship. Eileen was working in London and coming down at weekends, on this occasion obviously with Lydia. October 21st was a Saturday.

20

Mr K.: unidentified neighbour.

21

Clarke’s: seedsmen and producers of food for fowls.

22

Sunday (28th): Sunday was actually the 29th.

23

dari (weatings): dari or durra is Indian millet. ‘Wheatings’ is a proprietary name for the residue of milled wheat; the word dates from 1931.

24

The square brackets are Orwell’s.

25

21° frost: approximately 11° F or -12°C. The Thames froze for the first time since 1888.

26

we met: presumably Eileen was down for the weekend – the 24th was a Sunday.

27

1 stone = 14 pounds weight.

28

April 21st was a Sunday so Eileen would have been down at the cottage for the weekend.

1

There were at this time three London evening papers: Star, Evening News, and Evening Standard ; only the last has survived; it is still published.

2

British Expeditionary Force, the troops in France at the time of that country’s fall to the Germans.

3

In his entry for April 15, 1941, Orwell says he and Eileen went to the pub to hear the 9. o’clock news – so they evidently did not have a radio. They arrived a few minutes late and asked the barmaid what the news had been. She didn’t know saying they never switched on the radio because no one listened.

4

Alfred Duff Cooper (1890–1954; Viscount Norwich, 1952) was a Conservative politician, diplomat, and author. After he resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty, through disagreement with Chamberlain over Munich, he became the figurehead of the patriotic right. Churchill made him Minister of Information in May 1940. For his later career, see Second War-time Diary, 3.22.42, n. 7.

5

Orwell reviewed Portrait of Helen by Audrey Lucas in Time and Tide on June 8th. Amongst his comments were ‘the play has some good lines, but the stage management is extraordinarily bad’. See CW, XII, p. 181.

6

A Socialist weekly, then edited by Raymond Postgate to which Orwell contributed many reviews and essays.

7

The Communist Party’s daily newspaper in Britain.

8

The journal of the British Union of Fascists.

9

In May, Max Aitken, first Baron Beaverbrook (1879–1964), the Canadian newspaper proprietor, had been made Minister of Aircraft Production by Churchill. He was effective, if controversial. Later he was Minister for War Production. In 1918 he had served as Minister of Information.

10

Dr. Franz Borkenau (1900–1957), Austrian sociologist and political writer, born in Vienna, was from 1921 to 1929 a member of the German Communist Party. His Zur Soziologie des Faschismus was published in Tübingen, in 1933, the year he emigrated because of the coming to power of the Nazis. He published Pareto (1936) in the Modern Sociologists Series. Orwell reviewed his The Spanish Cockpit (see CW, XI, pp. 51–2), The Communist International (CW, XI, 202–4) and The Totalitarian Enemy (CW, XII, pp. 158–60) . Borkenau died in Zürich. For his conversations with Orwell at the time of Dunkirk, see below, 6.6.40.

11

Cyril Connolly (1903–1974) was with Orwell at St Cyprian’s Preparatory School and Eton. They met again in 1935 after Connolly had reviewed Burmese Days and were associated in a number of literary activities particularly the journal, Horizon, which Connolly edited and for which Orwell wrote. Orwell’s second wife, Sonia Brownell, worked for Horizon and they were introduced to each other by Connolly. Extracts from his Enemies of Promise (1938) relevant to Orwell are included in Orwell Remembered (pp. 32–4).

12

Unidentified. The number of hyphens Orwell used may not always represent the number of letters of the original name; the number in the diary is given here.

13

Published with Orwell’s review of Portrait of Helen, CW, XII, p. 180. Orwell found it impossible to take the characters’ problems seriously.

14

‘Eric,’ abbreviated from his second name, was the name by which Eileen Blair’s much-loved brother, Laurence Frederick O’Shaughnessy, was known. Orwell does not type his name in his diary, representing it by four short dashes. He was a distinguished chest and heart surgeon, having won four scholarships and studied medicine at Durham and in Berlin. He was Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons, 1933–35. In 1937 he won the Hunter Medal Triennial Prize for research work in surgery of the thorax, and the following year he received an honorarium and certificate of honourable mention for a dissertation on surgery of the heart. He produced an adaptation of Sauerbruch’s Thoracic Surgery (1937) and in 1939 collaborated with two others in work on pulmonary tuberculosis. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps at the outbreak of war and was killed tending the wounded on the beaches of Dunkirk. He was by then a major and only thirty-six years old (from obituary in The Times, June 8, 1940). His wife, Gwen, was also a doctor. Her brother’s death greatly affected Eileen; see Tosco Fyvel, George Orwell: A Personal Memoir, pp.105–06, 136.

15

Eamon de Valera (1882–1975), Irish political leader, was at this time Prime Minister of the Irish Free State. He became its president in 1959.

16

A popular Sunday newspaper.

17

The number of pages was reduced to six on July 1; see below 7.1.40.

18

Margot Asquith (1864–1945) was the widow of Herbert Henry Asquith, Earl of Oxford and Asquith, Prime Minister, 1906–16.

19

These figures were correct. Although most of their equipment was lost, 198,000 British and 140,000 mainly French and Belgian soldiers were evacuated. Of the forty-one naval vessels involved, six were sunk and nineteen damaged. In addition, about 220,000 servicemen were evacuated from ports in Normandy and Brittany.

20

‘Suppressed’ implies censorship; such posters (that is, newspaper-sellers placards) were forbidden simply to conserve raw materials and economise on imports, thereby saving shipping space.

21

See ‘My Country Right or Left,’ CW, XII, pp. 269–72. The title of the essay adapts Stephen Decatur’s ‘My country right or wrong’, 1816.

22

Sir Stafford Cripps; see Events, 7.2.39, n. 7.

23

Orwell wrote about the incident with the Parisian taxi driver in ‘As I Please’, 42, September 15, 1944. In brief, his taxi journey was so short that the driver was furious for being taken ‘off the rank for a fare which in English money was about threepence’ – and then more so because Orwell had no change. They had a ‘sordid squabble’ which ‘left me at the moment violently angry, and a little later saddened and disgusted. “Why do people have to behave like that?” I thought’. For the full account see, CW, XVI, pp. 402–3.

24

Local Defence Volunteers, later the Home Guard. Orwell joined on June 12 what became C Company, 5th County of London Battalion, and was soon promoted to sergeant, with ten men to instruct. He took his duties very seriously. See Crick, pp. 396–401 .

25

Marylebone Cricket Club, the body that then controlled national and international cricket.

26

A working-class constituency in the East End of London.

27

George Lansbury, a fervent pacifist; see Events, 8.11.39, n. 2.

28

Juan Negrín, former Prime Minister of Spain; see Events, 8.2.39, n. 3.

29

For Orwell’s hatred of such ‘ad-posters,’ featuring idiotic, grinning, yard-wide, ham-pink faces, see Keep the Aspidistra Flying, published four years earlier; for example, CW, IV, pp. 14,16,

30

Milton, Paradise Lost, iv, 110.

31

Albatross Library: The Albatross Continental Library had undertaken to publish Coming Up for Air on the Continent. See Events, 8.4.39, n. 7. The contract stipulated that the book was to be issued before August 1940. After the Germans occupied Paris on June 14 a decree was promulgated forbidding the sale of British books published after 1870 and thus the edition was not published.

32

P.W.: Victor William (Peter) Watson (1908–1956), a rich young man who, after much travel, decided, about 1939, to devote his life to the arts, and became co-founder with his friend Cyril Connolly of the magazine Horizon, which he financed and also provided all the material for the art section. In 1948 he was one of the founders of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. He was always an admirer of Orwell’s writing. See Michael Shelden, Friends of Promise: Cyril Connolly and the World of “Horizon” (1989).

33

The Hon. Unity Valkyrie Mitford (1914–1948), fourth daughter of the second Lord Redesdale, was, from 1934, when she first met Hitler, his admirer. In January 1940 she was brought back to England from Germany suffering from self-inflicted bullet wounds in the head. Thereafter she lived in retirement. She was not pregnant.

34

Possibly Michael, the owner of the small clothing factory mentioned in Orwell’s diary entry of 9.3.40.

35

G.: Gwen O’Shaughnessy, Eileen’s sister-in-law. In the early stages of the war, there was a government-sponsored scheme to evacuate children to Canada and the United States. Gwen’s son, Laurence, nineteen months old in June 1940, went to Canada on one of the last ships to take evacuees before the evacuee-ship City of Benares was sunk in the Atlantic. See below, 7.25.40.

36

New Statesman seems probable here, though the diary has five hyphens.

37

Probably Richard Crossman (1907–1974), scholar, intellectual, journalist, and left-wing politician, who was assistant editor of The New Statesman, 1938–55, and editor, 1970–72. He was also a Labour M.P., 1945–70; Minister of Housing and Local Government, 1964–66, and Minister of Health and Social Security, 1964–70.

38

The British 146th Infantry Brigade landed at Namsos, Norway, on the coast some 300 miles north of Oslo, on April 16–17, 1940. They withdrew May 2–3. The last Allied forces left Norway on June 9.

39

For Aneurin Bevan, Labour M.P., see Events, 8.28.39, n. 11. In 1949 Orwell said to a friend, ‘If only I could become Nye’s éminence grise we’d soon have this country on its feet.’ G. R. Strauss (1901–1993, Life Peer, 1979) was a Labour M.P. and co-director of Tribune.

40

Neville Chamberlain’s government fell on May 10, 1940, and a coalition government under Winston Churchill was formed. Magnanimously, Churchill included Chamberlain in his Cabinet.

41

R.H.: Rayner Heppenstall (1911–1981), novelist, critic, crime historian and BBC radio producer. He produced Orwell’s radio adaptation of Animal Farm and commissioned his radio play The Voyage of the Beagle, March 29, 1946 (see CW, XVIII, pp. 179–201). He and Orwell shared a flat in 1935 (not wholly amicably) but they remained lifelong friends. His Four Absentees (1960) has reminiscences of Orwell (reproduced in Orwell Remembered, pp. 106–15).

42

‘Unblimping’ was a frequent concern of Orwell’s. First used in the 1930s, the word initially described a pompous type of ex–army officer opposed to change of any kind. He was typified in the cartoons of David Low, always as a fat, puffing, obstructionist. The ‘Blimps’ had not moved past the First World War and were disruptive to the organisation and training of the Home Guard. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1943 film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, immortalised the idea. The film starred Roger Livesey as the Colonel, Deborah Kerr as the female lead, and Anton Walbrook as a sympathetically presented German of the colonel’s generation. Churchill wanted to ban the film because it showed a German officer sympathetically. The word ‘blimps’ was also the name given to barrage balloons that floated over London and proved effective in stopping dive-bombers (Stukas), though obviously bombs fell between them. See, for example: ‘War-time Diary,’ 8.23.40; ‘The Home Guard and You’ CW, XII, pp. 309–12; ‘Don’t Let Colonel Blimp Ruin the Home Guard’, CW, XII, pp. 362–5; review of Home Guard for Victory!, CW, XII, pp. 387–9; ‘London Letter,’ CW, XII, pp. 474–5.

43

Not certainly identified. Possibly Richard Crossman again (see n. 37 above) or Cyril Connolly. Inez Holden suggested either Christopher Hollis or a mysterious man known as Carter, whom Orwell’s friends never met.

44

See ‘London Letter,’ CW, XII, p. 355.

45

See ‘My Country Right or Left,’ CW, XII, pp. 269–72.

46

This is the first reference to Orwell’s dream of living in the Hebrides, to be realised in 1945 when he rented Barnhill, on Jura. Compare Winston Smith’s vision of the Golden Country in Nineteen Eighty-Four, CW, IX, pp. 129–130; see also Orwell’s review of Priest Island, CW, XII, pp. 190–1.

47

Jean Chiappe (1878–1940), Corsican head of the Paris police, 1927–34, was pro-Fascist and responsible for severely repressive measures against the left. Elliot Paul, referring to his dismissal on February 2, 1934, described him as ‘one of the ringleaders of Pétain’s Cagoulards, the hooded order conspiring for a fascist dictatorship’ (A Narrow Street, 1942, chap. 24). For Orwell on Chiappe’s death, see War-time Diary, 12.1.40.

48

Henri Philippe Pétain (1856–1951), successful defender of Verdun in 1916, which led to his being regarded as a national hero, was created a Marshal of France in 1918. He became premier in 1940, presided over the defeat and dismemberment of France by the Germans, and led the occupied zone’s Vichy government until war’s end. He was tried for collaboration with the Nazis and sentenced to death. President de Gaulle commuted his sentence to solitary confinement for life.

49

Pierre Laval (1883–1945) served at various times as French Minister of Public Works, Justice, Labour, Colonies, and Foreign Affairs, and was Premier, 1931–32, 1935–36. He left the Socialist Party in 1920 and gradually moved to the extreme right. On January 7, 1935, as Foreign Minister, he signed an agreement with Mussolini that backed Italian claims to areas of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in return for Italian support against German intervention in Austria. Italy invaded Abyssinia on October 3, 1935, and on December 18 the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, was forced to resign when it was revealed that he had entered into a pact with Laval appeasing Mussolini. After the fall of France, Laval came to represent treacherous collaboration. He even provided Frenchmen for work in German industry. Tried in 1945, he was executed after failing in a suicide attempt. For Hoare, see Events, 7.2.39, n. 5 and 8.4.39, n. 5. He was at this time British Ambassador in Spain.

50

Pierre-Étienne Flandin (1889–1958) held numerous offices in French governments. He was Premier, 1934–35, and Foreign Minister in Pétain’s government in 1940, but attempted to resist German demands and was replaced by Laval. He was forbidden to participate in public life after the war.

51

Eileen Blair and Gwen O’Shaughnessy, her sister-in-law, the wife of Eileen’s brother, Eric O’Shaughnessy killed at Dunkirk (see War-time Diary, 6.1.40, n. 14).

52

Probably Mrs. Anderson, who cleaned for the Orwells in Wallington. Although Orwell had, by the time this was written, been living in London for five or six weeks, he still visited Wallington. The Stores was not given up completely until 1947.

53

Ministry of Information, which was responsible for wartime propaganda. It had offices in the Senate House of the University of London, the city’s tallest new building of the interwar years. It suggested to Orwell Minitrue of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

54

R. A. Butler (1902–1984; Life Peer, 1965) was Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1938–41, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and later Foreign Secretary in the Conservative government of 1951–64.

55

L. H. Myers was a novelist and good friend to Orwell. He underwrote (unknowingly to Orwell) his and Eileen’s stay in Morocco in 1938–39.

56

Weekly newspaper of the Independent Labour Party, which Orwell had joined in June 1938, having fought with the ILP contingent in Spain. He left the party at the beginning of the war because it maintained a pacifist stance.

57

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) was at this time leader of the Free French and the inspiration for continuing French resistance to Germany after the fall of France. His national pride, coupled with the humiliation he felt at France’s collapse and his determination to free his country, made it difficult at times for the Allies to work with him. After the war, he was interim President 1945–46. He returned to power in 1958 as a result of the crisis in Algeria, and, as architect and President of the Fifth Republic, 1959–69, maintained France’s military and strategic independence.

58

Orwell was then living at 18 Dorset Chambers, Chagford Street, NW1; illustrated in Thompson, 54. This was about 150 yards from the south-east boundary of Regent’s Park.

59

Italo Balbo (1896–1940), head of the Italian Air Force, was responsible for the bombing of Ethiopians during the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–36.

60

Cyril Connolly.

61

Unidentified. Probably not L. H. Myers and his wife, for whom the description ‘all but pure pacifists’ is inappropriate.

62

The home of Gwen O’Shaughnessy in Greenwich.

63

In June 1939 the British submarine Thetis failed to surface on its trials. Only four of the complement of 103 were saved, owing to faulty escape apparatus. The painfully slow progress, and virtual failure, of the rescue attempts were followed with horror by many radio listeners. The submarine was recovered and entered active service as HMS Thunderbolt in November 1940. All the crew were told of the submarine’s history and given the opportunity to decline to serve in her. After a successful career, she was depth-charged and lost with all hands in March 1943. The non sequitur stems from Orwell’s cut.

64

See War-time Diary, 6.2.40, when People was twelve pages, for analysis of its contents.

65

Werner von Fritsch (1880–1939), an old-guard general on the German Army General Staff, never concealed his contempt for Hitler. His death in action in 1939 was always thought to have been engineered by the Führer.

66

Buenaventura Durruti, a gunman who became a general and popular leader. He was killed in the defence of Madrid, possibly by Communists. His funeral gave rise to a great popular demonstration in Barcelona. Emilio Mola Vidal (1887–1937), an equal colleague of Franco, was killed in the early stages of the civil war, before the question of primacy with Franco could arise.

67

On July 3, the Royal Navy under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir John Somerville attacked French warships at Oran and Mers el-Kébir, Algeria. Among the French ships sunk or damaged were the battleships Provence and Bretagne and the fast battlecruiser Dunkerque; 1,300 French seamen were killed. Several ships, including the battlecruiser Strasbourg and the aircraft carrier Commandant Teste, escaped to Toulon. French ships at Portsmouth and Plymouth were also seized, including 2 battleships, 2 cruisers, 8 destroyers, some 200 small craft, and a number of submarines. Crews had the option of joining the Allies or being repatriated.

68

On July 8, 1940, Royal Navy torpedo-boats attacked and seriously damaged the Richelieu at Dakar and the Jean Bart at Casablanca.

69

Vernon Bartlett (1894–1983), author of many books of political affairs, was at this time a leading liberal political journalist. He worked for the News Chronicle (which tended to favour the Liberal Party’s approach) and reported on world crises, especially those associated with Hitler, Mussolini, and the Far East. Won a sensational by-election in 1938 as an Independent MP opposing the Munich Agreement.

70

Edward, Duke of Windsor (1894–1972), had, as Prince of Wales, been extremely popular, expressing sympathy with the unemployed and those living in depressed areas. He ascended the throne, as Edward VIII, on January 20, 1936, but his decision to marry a twice-divorced woman, Mrs. Wallis Simpson, caused a crisis that led to his abdication on December 10, 1936. He and Mrs. Simpson married and lived in France thereafter except for the war years, when he acted as governor of the Bahamas. Ill-feeling and controversy, about ‘the Abdication Crisis’ and his association with Nazi Germany have not entirely evaporated.

71

Unidentified; possibly Tosco Fyvel (1907–1985). He was Jewish; his parents had emigrated from Vienna to what was then Palestine, where he was associated with the Zionist movement and had worked with Golda Meir. Orwell and he met in January 1940, with Fredric Warburg and others. The outcome of a series of further meetings was Searchlight Books, of which Orwell’s The Lion and the Unicorn (1941) was the first. See also T. R. Fyvel, George Orwell: A Personal Memoir (1982), 91–102.

72

Unidentified; possibly Fredric Warburg.

73

See War-time Diary, 6.17.40 regarding evacuation of children to Canada.

74

David Lloyd George had, like Pétain, been cast as a heroic leader during World War I, when he proved an effective prime minister. He was in a minority in seeking a conciliatory peace treaty with Germany after the war. For Lloyd George see also Events, 8.6.39, n. 3.

75

Unidentified.

76

On July 16, 1940, Hitler had said, in his Directive 16: ‘I have decided to prepare a landing operation against England, and, if necessary, to carry it out. The aim . . . will be to eliminate the English homeland . . . and, if necessary, to occupy it completely’ (Hitler’s War Directives 1939–45, edited by Hugh Trevor-Roper, 1964).

77

William Joyce (1908–1946), known as Lord Haw-Haw supposedly from his way of speaking, was an American citizen who never acquired British nationality, although he spent most of his life in England and was a rabid nationalist. He became a Fascist for whom Oswald Mosley’s line was too mild. In August 1939 he went to Germany and in 1940 became a naturalized German. Throughout the early part of the war he broadcast propaganda to England. He was hanged by the British, January 3, 1946.

78

Oswald Mosley, head of the British Union of Fascists; see Wigan Pier Diary, 3.16.36, n. 37.

79

See Orwell’s ‘London Letter,’ CW, XII, pp. 353–4, .

80

Jacques Doriot (1898–1945), a Communist who had turned to Fascism, was leader of the Parti Populaire François, which was financed by the Germans. On March 25, 1943, he wrote to Hitler: ‘L’armée allemande et ses allies ne combattant pas seulement pour l’Allemagne, mais pour Europe et par consequent pour France.’ He was behind the formation of La Légion des volontaires français contre bolchevisme (the LVF) – a first step in military collaboration with Germany during the occupation. Some 10,000 volunteers served in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. (Information from Memorial Museum, Caen.)

81

Gaston Bergery, a French deputy and intellectual, moved from the extreme right to the extreme left, and after the fall of France collaborated with the Germans.

82

When the diary was typed, five hyphens were shown here, but Orwell wrote ‘H. G. Wells’ above them; so his name has been given here without square brackets. The second use of his name and initials, in square brackets, had seven hyphens; the third had five hyphens, so the initials have been dropped. The word ‘careerist’ would be Orwell’s, not Wells’s. It was one of the most damning characteristics Orwell attributed to those of whom he disapproved.

83

Orwell wrote ‘Swinton’ over the seven hyphens originally typed, so his name is given here without square brackets. The next appearance of ‘Swinton,’ in square brackets, replaces seven hyphens; the third use replaces six. The six must, in this context, stand for ‘Swinton’ so it is apparent that the number of hyphens cannot be wholly relied upon. Philip Cunliffe-Lister, Viscount Swinton (1884–1972; Earl, 1955), entered Parliament as a Unionist (allied closely with the Conservatives) in 1918. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1931–35; Secretary of State for Air, 1935–38; Chairman of the United Kingdom Commercial Corporation, 1940–42; Cabinet Minister Resident in West Africa, 1942–44; and Minister of Civil Aviation, 1944–45.

84

The fact that Orwell was being pressed for income tax is of interest in the light of his near-poverty in the thirties. In 1939 only some twenty per cent of the population paid income tax (see Dearden Farrow, 2.19.85). Orwell’s difficulties, common to writers, actors, and others, may have been caused by higher earnings in an earlier year (for example, royalties for The Road to Wigan Pier) and because Eileen’s earnings would then, for tax, be treated as his.

85

Fewer planes were actually shot down than British and German air forces claimed at the time. On August 14 the Royal Air Force claimed to have shot down 144 German planes; this was revised to 71 after the war, when German records could be examined. On that day the RAF lost 16 planes, but eight pilots were saved. On September 15, 185 German planes were claimed; this proved to be 56; 26 RAF planes were lost, but half the pilots were rescued. This was the largest number claimed for any day of the Battle of Britain. From July to the end of October, the claim was 2,698 German planes shot down; the correct number was 1,733. The Germans claimed 3,058 RAF planes, but losses were 915 planes. To what extent this was deliberate official exaggeration and to what degree overenthusiastic reporting by pilots is difficult to assess.

86

This is probably George Mason, a medical consultant and close friend of Laurence O’Shaughnessy. Eileen saw him professionally early in 1945, and in a letter remarked that he and her brother thought well of Harvey Evers, the surgeon who operated on her on March 29, 1945. See Crick, p. 478.

87

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), a leader of the October 1917 revolution in Russia, and Commissar for Foreign Affairs and for War, 1917–24, was instrumental in the creation of the Red Army. In the power struggle that followed the death of Lenin in 1924 he lost to Stalin and was exiled. He was assassinated in Mexico because he and those who followed him continued to oppose Stalin. His death was attributed to the Soviet secret police, the OGPU.

88

David Low (1891–1963) was a fine political cartoonist of left-wing views who worked for the Evening Standard and later for the Manchester Guardian.

89

Unidentified. Tom Hopkinson, one of the founders of the unofficial Home Guard Training School at Osterley Park, tells how a Brigadier Whitehead attempted to have the school stopped in the autumn of 1940 because it did not have a licence; see his Of This Our Time (1982), p. 180. Orwell cannot be referring to Lieutenant-General Sir T. R. Eastwood, who took command of the Home Guard in the autumn of 1940; he was under fifty.

90

Passed over for promotion.

91

Osterley Park training school was run by Tom Wintringham (1898–1949) and Hugh (Humphrey) Slater (1905–1958). They taught guerrilla tactics and street-fighting based on their experience with the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell’s Lecture Notes for Instructing the Home Guard survive. They deal in considerable detail with street fighting, field fortifications, and smoke mortars (see CW, XII, 328–40).

92

‘Art of Knowing What Gives One Pleasure,’ Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler, chosen and edited by A. T. Bartholomew (1934), pp. 165–66. This book was reviewed by Orwell in 1934, CW, X, pp. 339–40.

93

In this raid the first bombs fell on central London; St Giles’s Church, Cripplegate, was hit. Although eleven-ton blockbuster bombs were later dropped by the RAF, at this stage of the war 2,000-pound bombs were not available. In the attack on Woolwich Arsenal and the London docks on September 7, 1940, some 300 German bombers dropped 337 tons of bombs – an average of 2,500 pounds per plane. Orwell may have had parachute mines, or their effect, in mind here. Churchill wrote General Ismay a memorandum on September 19, 1940, noting that the Germans had dropped 36 parachute mines. He wanted an appropriate response – 1,000-pound bombs if parachute mines were not available. The disadvantage of the parachute mine, except as a weapon of terror, was that, released at 5,000 feet and subject to the vagaries of the wind, it could not find a specific target. See Winston Churchill, The Second World War, II, pp. 321–22.

94

See Orwell’s ‘London Letter,’ CW, XII, pp. 356–7.

95

A suburb of London straddling NW8 and W9, about a mile from where the Orwells were living in Chagford Street.

96

R.R.: Sir Richard Rees, Bt. (1900–1970), was a long-time friend and benefactor of Orwell, especially when Orwell was trying to establish himself. Ravelston of Keep the Aspidistra Flying owes something to his generous nature. He was a painter and, from 1930–37, editor of The Adelphi. He was Orwell’s partner in his farm on Jura and became (with Sonia Orwell) his joint literary executor. See his George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory (1961) and extracts therefrom in Orwell Remembered, with part of a BBC interview (pp. 115–26). See also note on Rees, CW, X, pp. 181–2.

97

Unidentified.

98

The number killed in air raids in September was 6,954; 10,615 were seriously injured. The figures during the ensuing winter throughout Britain were:

99

Probably the ‘M’ mentioned in diary entry of 6.16.40 . £50 would be about a week’s wages for 10–12 people.

100

Holborn is in the City of London; Marylebone Railway Station, a London terminus, was some 200–300 yards from where Orwell was living in Chagford Street.

101

Woolwich, two to three miles east of Greenwich, where the O’Shaughnessys lived, was the location of a Royal Artillery depot, the Royal Military Academy, and the Royal Arsenal.

102

The Criterion is in Piccadilly Circus. The Windmill Theatre, as it proudly boasted, also ‘never closed’; it was a little to the northeast of Piccadilly Circus.

103

The Elephant and Castle, a public house, gave its name to this major working-class residential area, shopping centre, and meeting point of several important roads.

104

Stephen Spender’s flat, and the Horizon office, in Lansdowne Terrace, WC1. Orwell originally typed ‘S.S’s place’ but the first S was crossed out.

105

On September 22, 1940, Churchill wrote to President Roosevelt saying that 250,000 rifles ‘are most urgently needed, as I have 250,000 trained and uniformed men [the Home Guard] into whose hands they can be put.’ If they could be made available, it would ‘enable us to take 250,000 .303 rifles from the Home Guard and transfer them to the Regular Army, leaving the Home Guard armed with about 800,000 American rifles’ (The Second World War, II, p. 596).

106

When the Germans first bombed London, there appeared to be no anti-aircraft defence. Sometimes a single enemy plane would be cruising above and people could only wait anxiously, often for seemingly long periods, for a bomb to be dropped. At other times there would be a concentrated attack of incendiary bombs, high explosives, or both. After all the anti-aircraft guns available had been regrouped around London, quite unexpectedly they all opened up on the night of September 10. Orwell is absolutely correct about the effect on morale.

107

A leading department store, organized as a staff partnership, which still thrives.

108

In September 1940 a British expedition, co-operating with Free French forces under General de Gaulle, made an attempt to recapture the port of Dakar, West Africa, from the Vichy government. The expedition was a failure.

109

Both names unidentified.

110

Unidentified.

111

J. B. Priestley (1894–1984), a prolific popular novelist, dramatist, and man of letters. During 1940 and 1941 he gave a series of weekly radio talks urging the nation to take a united and determined stand against Hitler, hoping to make the country more democratic and egalitarian.

112

David R. Margesson (1890–1965; Viscount, 1942), Conservative M.P. for Rugby, 1924–42; Government Chief Whip, 1931–40, was loyal to each prime minister he served. Under Churchill he continued as Joint Government Whip, and after six months was Secretary of State for War.

113

Probably Tosco Fyvel, with whom Orwell was then working; see n. 71 above. ‘D’ not identified.

114

Editor and journal not identified.

115

Hitler’s New Order for Europe – Nazism.

116

It is possible that Orwell’s animosity towards Sir Samuel Hoare (see last sentence of the paragraph) may have led him to retail H.P.’s assertion. In The Second World War, Churchill, discussing the formation of his War Cabinet, in May 1940, defends Hoare, Halifax, and Simon against charges of responsibility for shortcomings in the period leading to the war (II, p. 10). Although he included the two lords in his Cabinet, he had Hoare appointed ambassador to Spain on May 17. He later comments that ‘no one could have carried out better this wearing, delicate, and cardinal five years’ mission’ (II, p. 459). For Hoare, see Events, 8.4.39, n. 5 .

117

Unidentified; its six hyphens may be an error for the seven of H. P.’s journal.

118

Alfred Duff Cooper, Minister of Information; see War-time Diary, 5.29.40, n. 4.

119

Pierre Comert, French journalist and former diplomat, came to England after the fall of France.

120

Mrs. Wallis Simpson, by this time married to the Duke of Windsor; see War-time Diary, 7.10.40, n. 70 .

121

For Pierre Laval, see War-time Diary, 6.24.40, n. 49.

122

Coventry was attacked during the night of November 14, 1940. The Daily Herald headlines for November 16 read ‘Midlands City Is Now Like A Bombarded French Town,’ ‘Coventry Homeless Slept by Roadside This Morning,’ ‘Not a Mortal Blow – Work will Restart.’ It reported that 500 planes were involved, that the Germans claimed 30,000 fire bombs fell in a dusk-to-dawn raid, and that the Ministry of Home Security said there were a thousand casualties (War Papers ; The War Papers is a reprinted series of newspapers, in 74 parts, 1977–78). 2194 Days of War states that 449 German planes carried out ‘carpet bombing’ of the centre of Coventry, destroying many historic buildings, including the fourteenth-century cathedral. There were 550 dead and many more wounded; 21 factories were destroyed, but the city’s productive capacity was not seriously affected. It concludes: ‘After this the Germans coined the word Coventrisieren meaning “annihilate, raze to the ground”’ (pp. 78–79). Churchill gives a figure of 400 killed and many more seriously injured and adds, ‘The German radio proclaimed that our other cities would be similarly “Coventrated’” (The Second World War, II, p. 332). See also Tom Harrisson, Living Through the Blitz (1976), especially chap. VI, ‘Coventration.’

123

See War-time Diary, 6.21.40, n. 47.

124

See War-time Diary, 6.30.40, n. 59.

125

This was a discussion programme with Desmond Hawkins on ‘The Proletarian Writer’. Reprinted in CW, XII, pp. 244–9.

126

See the reference in ‘My Country Right or Left’ to people being mildly shocked at ridiculing royalty, CW, XII, p. 272.

127

For Orwell’s review, published in December 1940, see CW, XII, pp. 292–3. General Wavell’s forces broke through the Italian lines commanded by General Graziani at Sidi Barrani on December 9, 1940. In the March issue of Horizon, the Editorial Comment concluded with this paragraph: ‘To the Spectator, and the many Horizon readers who have objected to Orwell’s review of Wavell’s Allenby, the Editor would like to point out that the review was written in the early summer, at a time when, after France, the title of general was unreassuring, and when Orwell had no inkling that the biographer of Allenby was to prove greater than his subject. It was several months before space could be found for it, and Mr. Orwell states that he was mistaken about General Wavell, and is glad he was mistaken, sorry to have made the mistake’.

128

For Orwell’s recording of its use as a verb, see below 1.22.41.

129

Unidentified.

130

The People’s Convention was organised in January 1941 by the Communists, ostensibly to fight for public rights, higher wages, better air-raid precautions, and friendship with the USSR, but some historians have said its true purpose was to agitate against the war effort. In July 1941, after Russia’s entry into the war, it immediately called for a second front. By 1942 its active work had ceased.

131

The Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson (1874–1966), Dean of Canterbury, 1931–63, became known as ‘the Red Dean’ for his pro-Russian sympathies. Among the books he wrote were The Socialist Sixth of the World, Soviet Strength, and Christians and Communism.

132

See Homage to Catalonia, CW, VI, p. 181.

133

See n. 128 above.

134

Tobruk fell to the British on January 22, 1941. It was retaken, on June 21, 1942, by German forces under General Erwin Rommel (1891–1944), the brilliant commander of the Afrika Korps, 1941–43, and in northern France at the time of the Allied landings in 1944.

135

Suppression lasted from January 22, 1941 to September 6, 1942.

136

A Communist newsletter for private subscribers edited by Claud Cockburn (also as Frank Pitcairn; 1904–81). The Week, which he edited from 1933–46, was a Communist newsletter for private subscribers.

137

This conversation must have been overheard shortly after January 5, 1941, when Bardia fell, to which the unidentified Mrs. J. referred on the next day. The fall of Tobruk was not complete until January 22, when the Italian garrison surrendered. Some 30,000 prisoners were taken (as compared to 40–45,000 at Bardia), for the loss of some 1,000 British and Allied killed and wounded. Mrs. J.’s confidence was not, therefore, quite as misplaced as later events proved. That The New Statesman allocated only two lines to the fall of Tobruk was partly a result of this being last-minute (and premature) news.

138

Robert Vansittart (1881–1957; Kt., 1929; Baron Vansittart of Denham, 1941), diplomat and writer, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1930–38, chief diplomatic adviser to the Foreign Secretary, 1938–41, was well known before and during the early part of the war for his outspoken criticism of Germany and the Germans. The pamphlet referred to here was Black Record: Germans Past and Present (1941). Peter Vansittart (1920–2008), novelist and friend of Orwell’s, was a distant cousin.

139

Arthur Koestler (1905–1983), novelist and essayist born in Budapest, joined the Communist Party in 1931 (from which he withdrew in the late 1930s) and spent a year in the USSR. He worked as a reporter during the Spanish civil war, was captured and condemned to death; he escaped when included in an exchange of prisoners. He was interned in France in 1940 and imprisoned by the British as an alien. Spanish Testament (1937) describes his experiences in Spain, and Scum of the Earth (1941; his first book written in English) his later experiences. Orwell reviewed his Darkness at Noon in 1941, and they became close friends. See Orwell’s ‘Arthur Koestler,’ written in 1944 and included in Critical Essays (1946); Arthur and Cynthia Koestler, Stranger on the Square, edited by Harold Harris (1984); and Living with Koestler, Mamaine Koestler’s Letters 1945–51, edited by Celia Goodman (1985).

140

The Pioneer Corps was the equivalent of the Construction Battalions in the United States Navy. It was in part recruited from those whom the authorities deemed to be politically uncertain – though frequently they were Jewish refugees from Germany and elsewhere who had the strongest grounds for opposing the Nazis. Later some such Pioneers were transferred to more dangerous and politically sensitive units, where their special knowledge and intelligence could be put to more useful and dangerous service.

141

William Edmund Ironside, first Baron of Archangel and Ironside (1880–1959), had been commander of Allied forces sent to fight the Bolsheviks at Archangel in 1918. He was later Chief of the Imperial General Staff, 1939–40, and head of Home Defence forces, May–July 1940. He was promoted a field marshal before he retired in 1940.

142

Tiers of metal bunks were provided so that people could sleep in Underground stations (used as air-raid shelters) in safety and relative comfort. For the effect of sheltering in this manner, see Henry Moore’s drawings: these express more than photographs. Moore suggests sleepers ‘doomed and haunted,’ suffering ‘an “unease” that is profoundly disturbing’ (Dennis Rudder, quoted by Eric Newton in his introduction to War Through Artists’ Eyes, 1945, p. 9. Moore is represented on pp. 62, 63, 65).

143

Denzil Jacobs, who was returning from Cheltenham where he had been conducting an audit (letter to editor, May 23, 1997). With his uncle and guardian, Victor Jacobs, a manufacturer of pianos (for whom he worked), he joined the Home Guard (then the Local Defence Volunteers) at Lord’s Cricket Ground on June 12, 1940. He served in Orwell’s platoon until he joined the RAF as a navigator in 1941. Mr Jacobs described the composition of the platoon to the editor on August 22, 1996. It was made up of very different men from wealthy wholesale grocers, to Victor Gollancz (who had fought as a Lieutenant at Passchendaele in 1917), to a van driver working for Selfridge’s in Oxford Street. The wealthy would play poker in quiet moments. Orwell joined in on one occasion but having lost ten shillings (50p in metric currency, roughly £20 today) he stopped, finding the stakes too high. Orwell, he said, was a fine section leader and particularly good on street fighting. He also built up a large (and very dangerous) stock of petrol bombs which he stored in a disused shed. Both men visited Orwell on a number of occasions in University College Hospital. Orwell, with some of his Home Guard section (including Fredric Warburg) are illustrated in Plate 18 of The Lost Orwell.

144

Gwen O’Shaughnessy, Eileen’s sister-in-law.

145

On February 12, Churchill, in the same telegram in which he congratulated General Wavell on the capture of Benghazi, ordered him to leave a minimum force to hold Cyrenaica, and send the largest force he could to Greece. The outcome proved Orwell’s worst fears to be correct.

146

General Ioannis Metaxas (1871–1941), Prime Minister of Greece since 1935, had established a form of dictatorship despite being a strong supporter of the monarchy. He successfully organised the defence when Italy invaded in 1940, but declined the offer of British tank and artillery units, foreseeing that Churchill could offer only limited aid, which could provoke a German invasion. Following his death, on January 29, Churchill renewed the offer, which was accepted. A British Expeditionary Force landed at Piraeus on March 7, the Germans invaded on April 6, and had conquered Greece by April 28.

147

At the beginning of the war, the RAF was required to drop leaflets over Germany, instead of bombs, in a vain hope of persuading the German people of the folly of their leaders’ ways. It was not an action that commended itself to the ordinary man-in-the-street at the time. Nevil Shute’s popular novel Landfall gave a fair indication of the response to this policy: pilots flying such a mission in January 1940 ‘were amused and scornful of the job they had to do. “Hitler doesn’t give a . . . for the stuff,” was the general opinion. . . . They expressed the view that the Fuhrer welcomed the paper for sanitary reasons’ (chapter V).

148

Sebastian Haffner (1907–1999) had arrived in England from Germany in 1938. He was not Jewish, but his wife was, and he was strongly opposed to Nazism. Although Secker & Warburg had published his ‘brilliant analysis of Nazism, Germany – Jekyll and Hyde’ (Fyvel, p. 99), which came out the day Paris fell, June 14, 1940, the British authorities interned him, and it took all Warburg’s persuasive powers to have him released. He became a correspondent on German affairs for The Observer and wrote for Fyvel and Orwell the Searchlight Book Offensive Against Germany, to which Orwell here refers. The book, which attempted to distinguish between ‘Germany’ and ‘Nazism,’ came out in late February or early March 1941. Haffner returned to work in Germany in 1954. His real name was Raimund Pretzel; the pseudonym was adopted from the title of a Mozart symphony. See Frederic Warburg, All Authors Are Equal, pp . 6–8.

149

The liberation of Eritrea and Abyssinia (as Ethiopia was then called) from the Italians was rapidly and efficiently carried out. The exiled emperor, Haile Selassie, was escorted back to Ethiopia on January 20, 1941, and re-entered his capital on May 5 accompanied by General Orde Wingate. The Duke of Aosta, Italian Viceroy of Ethiopia, surrendered on May 19. Forces under General Wavell had, with this surrender, taken some 230,000 Italians prisoner in North and East Africa. Mopping up lasted until October; by then the British commander, General Alan Cunningham, had left to command the 8th Army. Despite Orwell’s fears, Britain recognised an independent Ethiopia on January 31, 1942.

150

Rumours abound in wartime, and this sounds particularly fanciful. It may, however, refer to the use of radar (then called radiolocation in Britain), which the RAF announced on June 17, 1941 as having been instrumental in defeating the Luftwaffe, and possibly to IFF – the Identification Friend or Foe system – a revised form of which had been installed in all Fighter Command’s planes after the fall of France. This might suggest an ‘electronic net’ (information from RAF Museum).

151

The laconic humour is typical of Eileen.

152

Auxiliary Fire Service.

153

Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

154

It was no false rumour. The pocket-battleship Scheer and the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sank or captured seventeen ships about this time (long-range bombers sank 41; U-boats, 41). The battlecruisers reached Brest on March 22 but were then immobilized following British air attacks on the port.

155

The Pioneer Corps; see War-time Diary, 2.12.41, n. 140 .

156

Captain Sir Basil Liddell Hart; see Events, 7.16.39, n. 1. His The British Way in Warfare was reviewed by Orwell in The New Statesman and Nation, November 21, 1942, CW, XIV, pp. 188–90 . Though critical, Orwell also wrote, ‘No military writer in our time has done more to enlighten public opinion.’

157

The defeat at the Battle of Cape Matapan. The British sank without loss to themselves the Italian cruisers Zara, Fiume, and Pola and the destroyers Alfieri and Carducci. The battleship Vittorio Veneto was crippled.

158

Cyril Connolly then had a furnished flat on the top floor of Athenaeum Court, Piccadilly, partly paid for by Peter Watson, sponsor of Horizon. For watching the raid from the roof-top on September 7, 1940, see Michael Shelden, Friends of Promise, p. 62. For Hugh Slater, see War-time Diary, 8.23.40, n. 91.

159

Admiral Nelson defeated the French fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, but Napoleon nevertheless went on to victory at Austerlitz later that year, defeating the combined forces of Russia and Austria and forcing Austria out of the war. Hitler may have lost the Battle of London, Orwell was saying, but it must be expected that he would have subsequent victories elsewhere.

160

See War-time Diary, 3.14.41, nn. 145 and 146.

161

The budget raised the basic rate of income tax to ten shillings in the pound (50%).

162

Connolly not only said but wrote this: ‘For the weak point in the judgment of intellectuals is that they tend to be right about the course of events, but wrong about their tempo’ (Comment, Horizon, September 1940, p. 83).

163

General Rommel’s troops encircled Tobruk on April 12. The British forces had been swept out of Cyrenaica very rapidly (their strength having been depleted to send a force to Greece). However, Tobruk held out until relieved on December 4, 1941.

164

See War-time Diary, 5.28.40 and 6.24.40.

165

Refrain from World War I song ‘Mademoiselle from Armentières,’ or ‘Armenteers,’ as it was sung.

166

Orwell’s suspicion that German troops had not been ‘mown down in swathes’ was well founded. For details of losses, see War-time Diary, 5.3.41.

167

The anxiety felt by Australians and New Zealanders that their troops had been lost pointlessly was, perhaps, the reason for Churchill’s giving, in his history of the war, the total losses as percentages: 55.8% for United Kingdom troops, 25.1 for Australians, and 19.1 for New Zealanders. (The Second World War, III, p. 206). The percentage lost of those in Greece at the time of the attack (which Churchill does not calculate) were 34% UK troops lost; 17.33% Australians; and 13.55% New Zealanders. See also below, 5.3.41, n. 170. A New Zealander, General Bernard Freyburg, VC, took command in Crete.

168

The London Zoo’s animals were sold because of the shortage of food to feed them.

169

Unidentified.

170

According to Liddell Hart, ‘On March 7, . . . the first contingent of a British force of 50,000 troops landed in Greece. . . . They narrowly escaped complete disaster . . . leaving all their tanks, most of their other equipment, and 12,000 men behind in German hands’ (History of the Second World War, 1970, p. 125). Churchill gives the ‘losses’ as: United Kingdom, 6,606 (presumably including Polish forces), Australian, 2,968, New Zealand, 2,266, or, 11,840 of the 53,051 in Greece at the time of the German attack. Of the survivors, 18,850 were evacuated to Crete; 7,000 went to Crete and later to Egypt; 15,361, including the wounded, went directly to Egypt; some 9,451 others, not army, were also evacuated – a total of 50,662 (The Second World War, III, pp. 205–06). 2194 Days of War states that the expeditionary force lost 12,712 men, of whom 9,000 were taken prisoner; Italian losses in the six months of the campaign were 13,755 dead, 50,000 wounded, 12,368 severely frostbitten, 25,067 missing; German losses in Greece and Yugoslavia were 1,684 dead, 3,752 wounded, 548 missing (hardly ‘mown down in swathes;’ see above 4.22.41 ); the Greeks lost 15,700 dead and missing. The evacuation, conducted mainly by the Royal Navy, but with the help of Allied ships, was successful (2194 Days of War, p. 120).

171

Sir Percy Spender (1897–1985), lawyer and politician, was at this time Minister for the Army in the Australian War Cabinet. At the 1950 Commonwealth Conference he proposed a scheme for the economic development of south and south-east Asia, which came to be known as the Colombo Plan. He was a judge at the International Court of Justice, The Hague, 1958–64, and President of the Court, 1964–67.

172

Vyacheslav Molotov (see Events, 8.28.39, n. 4 ) had been Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (later Council of Ministers) from 1930, but was replaced in May 1941; he remained Deputy Chairman.

173

Number 111 was the Orwell’s flat in Langford Court, Abbey Road, NW8. It was not a house, as Orwell describes it a line or two later, but a block of flats.

174

Rudolf Hess (1894–1987), Nazi Deputy Führer and close friend of Hitler, flew a Messerschmitt-110 to Scotland on May 10, 1941. He baled out, was captured by the Home Guard, and, giving his name as Alfred Horn, asked to see the Duke of Hamilton; he hoped, through him, to negotiate a peace settlement. Churchill, not wanting peace discussed when affairs were going so badly, had Hess’s arrival kept quiet, but the Germans broke the news on May 13 and declared that Hess was insane. He was sentenced in 1946, at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, to life imprisonment and was incarcerated in Spandau prison until his death, in controversial circumstances. Allegations have been made that the man who flew to Britain and who died in Spandau was an impostor.

175

Admiral François Darlan (1881–1942) was Commander-in-Chief of the French Navy from 1939; Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister in the Vichy government, February 1941–April 1942. He was assassinated on December 24, 1942; see Second War-time Diary, 5.30.42.

176

Rashid Ali al-Gailani (1892–1965), pro-Nazi Prime Minister of Iraq, on April 19, 1941 refused permission for British forces to move through his country on the basis of a 1930 treaty. After a brief struggle, an armistice was agreed and a pro-British government installed. Rashid Ali fled to Iran on May 30, 1941.

177

Orwell’s ‘sensation of utter helplessness’ seems to be expressed by his running together the names of Nazi and Communist leaders opposed to Britain and territories which might be vulnerable to attack and which might provide the means of encircling Germany and Italy. However, Britain’s resources in men, ships, and planes were severely strained, making takeovers of Dakar, the Canaries, Tangier, Syria, Morocco, and Iraq impracticable. Nevertheless, the troops already in Iraq were reinforced from April 24, Baghdad was occupied on June 1, and a pro-British Iraqi cabinet was appointed on June 5. On June 8, British and Free French troops entered Syria, and French troops loyal to Vichy accepted an armistice on July 11. Given these operations, the fighting in North Africa, a spring bombing campaign against Britain, the disasters in Greece and unfolding in Crete, to take such a plum as Dakar, with its Vichy warships, was beyond Allied hopes. An attempted assault on Dakar on September 24–25, 1940, had not been continued when it was realized how effective and determined the defences were.

178

There were in all some 42,500 troops in Crete: 17,960 British; 10,300 Greek; 7,700 New Zealanders; 6,540 Australians. (Liddell Hart gives 28,600 British, Australian, and New Zealand troops and ‘almost as many Greeks.’) Only recently escaped from Greece, they were ill-organised and had little air protection. They had only sixty-eight anti-aircraft guns to cover an island nearly 160 miles in length. The German air force attacked early in the morning of May 20 with great effect, and troops were then dropped by parachute and flown in by plane. The officer commanding, General Freyburg, had told Churchill on May 5 that he was ‘not in the least anxious about airborne attack . . . can cope adequately with the troops at my disposal’ (The Second World War, III, p. 246). Despite the success of the German paratroopers, Hitler was disinclined to attempt another attack by his airborne forces.

179

Of the more than fifty warships engaged, many in attempting to protect troops from air attack, three cruisers and eight destroyers were sunk; three battleships, an aircraft carrier, seven cruisers, nine destroyers, and some smaller ships were damaged; the Navy lost 2,261 men (The War Papers, No. 15; Liddell Hart gives slightly different figures, p. 142).

180

It was no empty excuse. British Middle East Command lost some 200 planes in Greece. The RAF had only 21 serviceable Hurricanes to defend Libya and 14 to protect Suez and Alexandria. Hence the burden placed on the Royal Navy, and the cruel naval ditty: ‘Roll out the Nelson, the Rodney, the Hood, / Since the whole bloody air force is no bloody good.’ Hood, alas, was there only for the rhyme; it was sunk by Bismarck on May 24, 1941, on the day before this Diary entry (The War Papers, No. 15).

181

Of the 42,500 servicemen on Crete, 16,500 were rescued, of whom some 2,000 were Greek soldiers (Liddell Hart, p. 14).

182

The cruisers Calcutta, Fiji, and Gloucester were sunk, as were the destroyers Greyhound, Hereward, Imperial, and Juno, with the loss of 2,011 sailors on these ships and others hit but not sunk . The Allied forces lost 16,583 men (of which 8,200 were British, 3,376 Australian, 2,996 New Zealanders). The Germans lost 3,714 killed and missing and some 2,500 wounded (2194 Days of War, June 2, 1941).

183

Latakia in Syria. The report was not correct. The British expected the Germans to ‘pounce upon Cyprus, Syria, Suez, or Malta’ after taking Crete. After the war, General K. Student, Commander-in-Chief of the German Airborne Forces, revealed that Hitler was reluctant to risk the attack on Crete. After the heavy losses suffered in taking Crete (though the Allied losses were much greater), he refused ‘a further jump from Cyprus to capture the Suez Canal’ (Liddell Hart, pp. 144–45).

184

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952), then Britain’s Ambassador in Moscow, had returned to London on June 11. On June 13, Count Friedrich von Schulenburg, German Ambassador in Moscow, telegraphed the German Foreign Office: ‘. . . Even before the return of the English Ambassador Cripps to London, but especially since his return, there have been widespread rumours of an impending war between the U.S.S.R. and Germany in the English and foreign press.’ He described these rumours as obviously absurd, but had thought it necessary in responsible circles in Moscow ‘to state they are a clumsy propaganda manoeuvre’ (Churchill, The Second World War, III, pp. 326–37). See also Events, 7.2.39, n. 7.

185

Ships of neutral countries (such as Finland) could be issued with certificates by consular officials stating that the ship and its cargo should be allowed free passage without being boarded and searched.

186

It was the custom of the BBC to play the national anthems of all Allied nations each Sunday evening.

187

The direct avoidance of the word ‘allies’ at this stage was significant. On July 12, an Anglo-Russian agreement was signed in Moscow by Sir Stafford Cripps and Vyacheslav Molotov. This declared that each party would support the other ‘in the present war against Hitlerite Germany’ and would not sign a separate armistice or peace agreement. The distinction between being an ally and being a ‘co-belligerent’ was pointedly made in commentaries. Thus, Vernon Bartlett, News Chronicle political correspondent, wrote, on July 14 (the day the agreement was announced), under the heading ‘Moscow Not an Ally But a “Co-Belligerent”’: ‘People were asking yesterday whether the Soviet Union is now to be looked upon as an allied or an associate Power. Such questions are . . . foolish.’ As to the phrase ‘Hitlerite Germany,’ he said it suggested that ‘the Russians still hope to split public opinion inside Germany.’

188

Perhaps more commonly known as ‘There were ten in the bed and the little one said, “Roll over”’ (from a popular song).

189

From the moment the Soviet Union entered the war on the same side as Britain there was constant agitation for the opening of a second front. Much of this was promoted by Communists and Communist sympathisers.

190

A journal of the extreme right.

1

Sir Stafford Cripps (see Events, 7.2.39, n. 7 and War-time Diary, 6.14.41, n. 184) flew to India on March 22, to arrange a compromise settlement with the Indian Congress Party, the party of Indian independence. He hoped to obtain Indian cooperation during the war and agreement to gradual transition to independence when it was over. Nehru and the Congress Party would accept nothing less than complete independence and the talks broke down on April 10.

2

One of Orwell’s duties for the BBC Service to India was writing newsletters. In all, he wrote in English 55 or 56 for India, 30 for Malaya, and 19 for Indonesia. He also wrote 115 or 116 for translation into Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil and Hindustani. For these references, see Newsletter in Marathi, No. 3, March 19, 1942, CW, XIII, pp. 234–5 and his Weekly News Review in English, No. 15, March 21, 1942, CW, XIII, pp . 236–9.

3

Lord Beaverbrook (see War-time Diary, 5.29.40, n. 9 ) had, under Churchill, been Minister of Aircraft Production, 1940–41, and Minister of Supply, 1941–42. His contribution was controversial but his boundless energy inspired confidence and the supply of planes increased.

4

A member of the (women’s) Auxiliary Territorial Service, later WRAC – Women’s Royal Army Corps.

5

‘William Hickey’ wrote a social-diary column in the Daily Express for more than fifty years; it was edited by various journalists. At this time, its originator, Tom Driberg (1905–1976), a left-wing politician who later became a Labour M.P., was its editor. Orwell added a handwritten footnote to the typescript identifying ‘William Hickey’ as Tom Driberg. Despite serving as Chairman of the Labour Party (1957–58), Driberg earlier worked for the KGB. His code name was ‘Lepage’ (see Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive, 1999, pp. 522–6). Orwell suspected him of treachery and included him in his ‘List of Crypto-Communists and Fellow Travellers’ (see CW, XX, pp. 242 and 246).

6

For Harold Nicolson (1886–1968; Kt. 1953) critic, biographer, and M.P., see Events, 8.30.39, n. 1. Among his biographies were those of Tennyson, Byron, Swinburne, Lord Curzon, King George V, and Sainte-Beuve.

7

For Alfred Duff Cooper (1890–1954; Viscount Norwich, 1952), diplomat, biographer of Talleyrand and Earl Haig; see War-time Diary, 5.29.40, n. 4. He had served briefly as War Cabinet representative in Singapore, and responsibility was partly, if hardly fairly, laid at his door for its fall. He was British representative with the French Committee of National Liberation in North Africa (headed by General de Gaulle), and for three years from September 1944 was British Ambassador in Paris. His autobiography is Old Men Forget (1953).

8

New British Broadcasting Station broadcast propaganda in English from Germany. For Orwell’s description of its policy, see his ‘London Letter,’ January 1, 1942, CW, XIII, pp. 110–111. W. J. West devotes a chapter of his Truth Betrayed (1987) to the New British Broadcasting Station. He also discusses two other German stations which broadcast to Britain, the Workers Challenge Station and the Christian Peace Movement [station]; he prints three of their broadcasts in an Appendix.

9

This was another station broadcasting propaganda in English from Germany.

10

Victor Serge (Kilbat’chiche; 1890–1947), author and journalist, born in Brussels of exiled Russian intellectuals, was French by adoption. He was associated with the anarchist movement in Paris. After the Russian Revolution, he transferred his activities to Moscow, Leningrad, and Berlin (where he ran a newspaper, the Communist International) . His close association with Trotsky led to his deportation to Siberia in 1933. After his release, he was Paris correspondent for the POUM during the Spanish civil war. In 1941 he settled in Mexico, where he died, impoverished. Among his many books are From Lenin to Stalin (1937; translated from French); Vie et mort de Trotsky (Paris, 1951), and Memoires d’un révolutionnaire 1901 –1941 (Paris, 1951; English translation, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 1963). He wrote an introduction to Revolution et contre-revolution en Espagne by Joaquin Maurin (1896–1973) co-founder of the POUM (1937).

11

Dr. Krishna S. Shelvankar (1906–1996), Indian writer and journalist. He was in England during the war as a correspondent for Indian newspapers. His book, The Problem of India (Penguin Special, 1940), was banned in India. Orwell’s superior at the BBC, Z. A. Bokhari, wrote to the Eastern Service Director to say he was strongly opposed to Shelvankar being allowed to broadcast: ‘Call me a die-hard if you like, but in my opinion the time has not come for us to make such advances towards the truculent damsel – “Miss Nationalism”’ (CW, XIII, p. 242). Despite Orwell’s reference to Shelvankar as ‘our fairly embittered enemy’, he did broadcast to India under Orwell’s aegis. When Pakistan became independent, Bokhari was appointed Director-General of Pakistan Radio.

12

The Daily Mirror, a popular leftist daily newspaper, had been called to order by Churchill for taking what he called a defeatist line, that is, critical of the government’s handling of the war. After the debate in the House of Commons the affair fizzled out.

13

Aneurin (Nye) Bevan (see Events, 8.28.39, n. 11 ), Labour M.P., had been, for most of 1939, in conflict with his party and he was expelled for supporting Sir Stafford’s Cripps’s Popular Front campaign though his integrity was never in doubt. He edited Tribune, 1942–45 (a remarkable achievement for someone who could barely read when he left school at the age of thirteen), and gave Orwell support even when he disagreed with him. His great achievement was the creation of the National Health Service out of a variety of earlier proposals. His In Place of Fear (1952) sets out his philosophy.

14

Herbert Morrison (1888–1965; Baron Morrison of Lambeth), Labour MP from 1923, Leader of the London County Council, 1933–40; Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security, 1940–45. He was Leader of the House of Commons and Deputy Prime Minister, in Clement Attlee’s two administrations, 1945–51. In the debate to which Orwell refers, his subversive writings from World War I, when he was a conscientious objector, were also quoted (see Hugh Cudlipp, Publish and be Damned, pp. 195–6).

15

This was the pseudonym of William Connor (1900–1967; Kt., 1966), a well-known radical journalist who wrote this personal column in the Daily Mirror. His English at War (April 1941) was the most popular of the Searchlight Books edited by T. R. Fyvel and Orwell; it was reprinted three times.

16

Dr Tom Jones (1870–1955; CH), Cabinet Secretary to Lloyd George. In 1939 he was instrumental in the establishment of CEMA – the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts – which later became the Arts Council of Great Britain.

17

Sir James Grigg (1890–1964; KCB), Permanent Under-Secretary for War, 1939–42, and Secretary of State for War, 1942–45. He had served as Finance Member on the Viceroy of India’s Council and when Churchill set up the India Committee on February 25, 1942, he was selected to advise on Indian affairs. Churchill wanted him to accept a peerage but he declined. His wife, Lady Grigg, who was involved in the radio series, ‘Women Generally Speaking’, for the BBC’s Eastern Service, was a thorn in Orwell’s flesh.

18

This stemmed initially from Orwell’s article ‘Wells, Hitler and the World State,’ Horizon, August 1941 (CW, XII, pp. 536–41) and was further stimulated by his broadcast talk ‘The Re-discovery of Europe,’ about which Wells wrote to The Listener. Inez Holden was present at a ‘God-awful row’ between Wells and Orwell arising from the Horizon article. Orwell thought Wells’s belief that the Germans might be defeated quite soon was a disservice to the general public; Wells accused Orwell of being defeatist, though he withdrew that. This outburst passed over reasonably amicably, but was revived when Orwell’s broadcast was printed in The Listener, leading to the abusive letter mentioned here. Holden wrote to Ian Angus, May 21, 1967, that Orwell very much regretted the Horizon article and was sorry he had upset Wells, whom he had always greatly admired. See also Crick, pp. 427–31.

19

Homage to Catalonia, CW, VI, Appendix I, pp. 208 and 209.

20

Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945) was an Indian nationalist leader and left-wing member of the Indian National Congress. Fiercely anti-British, he organised an Indian National Army to support the Japanese. This he led, unsuccessfully, against the British. He believed that when the INA faced Indian troops led by the British, the latter would not fight but be converted. ‘Instead, the revolutionary had reverted to his comfortable mercenary status. INA soldiers took to looting from local tribes’ (Mihir Bose, The Lost Hero [1982], p. 236). His followers long believed him to be still alive (despite two Indian government inquiries), but it seems certain he died following a plane crash on August 19, 1945 (The Lost Hero, pp. 251–52). Documents released by the War Office in November 1993 show that a substantial number of Indian prisoners of war defected to the Italians, the first 3,000 arriving in Italy in August 1942. A British Intelligence report stated, ‘We have by our policy towards India, bred up a new class of officer who may be loyal to India, and perhaps to Congress, but is not necessarily loyal to us’ (Daily Telegraph, December 5, 1993).

21

Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman (1878–1961), evangelist and propagandist, founded, in 1921, the Moral Re-Armament movement, also known, from its place of foundation, as the Oxford Group Movement, and sometimes as Buchmanism.

22

Mulk Raj Anand (1905–2004), novelist, story-writer, essayist, and critic. He was born in India, fought in the Spanish Civil War (though he did not meet Orwell there), and taught literature and philosophy to London County Council adult education classes. He wrote scripts for the BBC, 1939–45. After the war he returned to India and lectured at various universities and was made Professor of Fine Arts, University of Punjab, in 1963. Orwell reviewed his The Sword and the Sickle in Horizon, July 1942 (CW, XIII, pp. 379–81). In a letter of September 29, 1983, Anand wrote this of Orwell: ‘In his life his voice was restrained. He talked in furtive whispers. Often he dismissed the ugly realities with cynical good humour. And I seldom saw him show anger in his face, though the two deep lines on his cheeks and the furrowed brow signified permanent despair. He smiled at tea time and he was a good companion in a pub. But he delivered his shafts in a very mellow voice, something peculiarly English deriving from the Cockney sense of humour’. See Abha Sharma Rodrigues, ‘George Orwell, the BBC, and India: A Critical Study’ (Edinburgh University, PhD, 1994).

23

V. K. Krishna Menon (1897–1974), Indian statesman, lawyer, author, and journalist, was then living in England. He was active in British left-wing politics and was spokesman of the Indian Congress Party in England in the struggle for independence. In 1947, when India had become independent, he was High Commissioner for India and he represented India at the United Nations, 1952–61. On January 31, 1943, he was one of six speakers at the ‘India Demonstration’ at the London Coliseum (Tribune, January 29, 1943, p. 20).

24

On April 5, the heavy cruisers Dorsetshire and Cornwall, the destroyer Tenedos, and the armed merchant-ship Hector were sunk by Japanese aircraft operating from carriers in the Indian Ocean. On April 9 (the day 64,000 Filipinos and 12,000 Americans surrendered at Bataan) the aircraft carrier Hermes and the destroyer Vampire were among a further group of ships sunk by the Japanese in the Indian Ocean, including 135,000 tons of merchant and troop ships.

25

‘Who dies if England live?’ comes from Kipling’s ‘For All We Have and Are’ (1914) and was quoted by Orwell in ‘Notes on the Way’, March 30 and April 6, 1940 (CW, XII, p. 126); it also has the line, ‘The Hun is at the gate!’ Although ‘Hun’ had been used derogatively for a German in the nineteenth century, its twentieth-century usage was introduced by Kaiser Wilhelm II in a widely reported speech when addressing his troops on July 27, 1900, before their departure for China.

26

Sir Stafford Cripps’s mission to India.

27

Thomas Henry (Tom) Wintringham, writer and soldier, had commanded the British Battalion of the International Brigade in the Spanish civil war. He later founded Osterley Park Training Centre for the Home Guard. His books include New Ways of War, Politics of Victory, and People’s War. See War-time Diary, 8.23.40, n. 91 and David Fernbach, ‘Tom Wintringham and Socialist Defense Strategy,’ History Workshop, 14 (1982), 63–91.

28

Father Charles E. Coughlin (1891–1979), born and educated in Canada, became a Roman Catholic priest and achieved prominence through use of the radio in the United States in the 1930s. As early as 1934, when he founded the National Union for Social Justice, he argued that the United States was being manipulated by Britain into involvement in a new European war; ‘I raise my voice,’ he said, ‘to keep America out of war.’ Orwell refers to his magazine, Social Justice, in which he expressed near-Fascist views. Its circulation through the mail was forbidden in the United States because it contravened the Espionage Act. It ceased publication in 1942, the year Coughlin was silenced by his ecclesiastical superiors.

29

On April 18, 1942, sixteen B-25 bombers, led by Colonel James H. Doolittle, flew from the carrier Hornet and bombed Tokyo. The effect was psychological rather than military. Because the planes had insufficient fuel to make the return flight, they flew on to China. Bad weather forced several crash-landings; one plane landed near Vladivostok and the crew was interned; two landed in Japanese-held territory and some airmen were executed on October 15, 1942. Of the 80 crew members, 71 survived.

30

Bose escaped from India, with German help, via Afghanistan, in the winter of 1940–41. When he reached Moscow, the Russians ‘were extremely hospitable but determinedly evasive about helping him. In Berlin the Germans were more receptive’ (Mihir Bose, The Lost Hero, p. 162). He was in Germany until February 8, 1943, when he sailed from Kiel in a U-boat (p. 205).

31

The chamber of the House of Commons was severely damaged in an air raid on May 10, 1941. The Commons sat in the Lords’ chamber, which had been only slightly damaged. The Lords sat in their robing room.

32

Allied forces landed at Diego-Suarez, Madagascar, on May 5 and by September had taken over the island, strategically important in the light of naval losses in the Indian Ocean. It had supported the Vichy government under Pétain.

33

It was rumoured that the Germans would move east from Crete in June 1941. Allied forces therefore invaded Syria, wresting it from Vichy French troops.

34

The original Thomas Rainsborough, or Rainborow, was a republican who fought for the Commonwealth in the Civil War. He commanded the warship Swallow in 1643 and two years later a regiment in the New Model Army. In 1646 he became an M.P. and led republicans in Parliament but was eventually reconciled with Cromwell. He was fatally wounded in battle in 1648. The name was adopted in Tribune to exemplify extreme radical, Leveller-type views . The pseudonym was being used by Frank Owen.

35

Frank Owen (1905–1979; OBE, military), journalist, author, and broadcaster, was a Liberal M.P., 1929–31; edited the Daily Express, 1931–37 and the Evening Standard, 1938–41 (both right-wing Beaverbrook newspapers). With Michael Foot (acting editor, Evening Standard, 1942; later, Deputy Leader and Leader of the Labour Party, 1976–83) and Peter Howard, he wrote Guilty Men (Gollancz 1940), under the pseudonym Cato, which attacked Chamberlain, Halifax, and other Conservative leaders for appeasing Hitler. In Beaverbrook: A Study in Power and Frustration (1956), Tom Driberg writes of Owen, ‘who had lately been called up but was writing in Tribune, under the pseudonym Thomas Rainsborough, articles severely critical of Churchill and his war strategy’ (p. 287). He served in the Royal Armoured Corps and South East Asia Command, 1942–46, and was promoted from trooper to lieutenant colonel by Lord Louis Mountbatten with instructions to produce a daily paper for the command from 1943 despite the strenuous opposition of Sir James Grigg. He reprinted in SEAC seven of the occasional pieces Orwell wrote for the Evening Standard, 1945–46. He edited the Daily Mail, 1947–50, and wrote, among other books, The Three Dictators (1940) and The Fall of Singapore (1960).

36

Fredric Warburg (1898–1980), managing director of Secker & Warburg and Orwell’s publisher.

37

The Battle of the Coral Sea, May 4–8, was the first naval engagement fought entirely by aircraft, the ships involved never coming into each other’s sight. The Americans lost the aircraft carrier Lexington, a tanker, a destroyer, 74 planes, and 543 men; the Japanese lost the light carrier Shoho, a destroyer, over 80 planes and more than 1,000 men. (Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War, pp. 361–63.)

38

Entry in parentheses, dated May 30, was added by Orwell to the manuscript version only.

39

A twenty-year treaty of collaboration between Russia and Britain was signed in London on May 26, 1942.

40

General (later Field Marshal) Sir Claude Auchinleck (familiarly known as ‘The Auk’) (1884–1981), served in World War 1 in the Mesopotamian campaign. In World War 2 he took part in the failed Norwegian campaign in 1940. In July 1941 took over the Eighth Army from Field Marshal Wavell in North Africa. Despite some success, he lost the confidence of Winston Churchill and was transferred to India. There he organized with considerable success the training of forces for the Burma Campaign and the supply of materials for the Fourteenth Army.

41

J. L. Garvin, right-wing journalist, was the editor of The Observer, 1908 to February 28, 1942. At the beginning of the war, he disagreed with Viscount Astor, the proprietor of the paper, who questioned the advisability of Churchill’s being Prime Minister and Minister of Defence at the same time.

42

The Honourable David Astor (1912–2001), served in the Royal Marines, 1940–45 (Croix de Guerre, 1944) and was foreign editor, 1946–48, editor, 1948–75, and Director, 1976–81 of the Observer. He made the Observer a paper of ideas so that it overtook the circulation of the Sunday Times in 1946. He believed in clear English prose and would circulate Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’ (CW, XVII, pp. 421–32) to new members of staff as a guide to clear thinking and precise writing. Astor and Orwell became good friends and he told the editor that whenever he needed cheering up he would arrange to meet Orwell in a pub in order to enjoy his sense of humour. Astor arranged for Orwell to be buried, as Orwell wished, according to the rites of the Church of England. See Remembering Orwell, pp. 218–20.

43

Trades Union.

44

Desmond Hawkins (1908–1999; OBE, 1963), novelist, literary critic and broadcaster. He did much free-lance work for the BBC during the war. He wrote the London Letter for Partisan Review before Orwell and recommended that Orwell succeed him.

45

Admiral Francois Darlan, (1881–1942), Commander-in-Chief of the French Navy, and Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister in the Vichy Government from February 1941 to April 1942. When the Allies invaded Morocco and Tunisia (then French territories) in November 1942, a deal, much criticised in Britain and America, was negotiated with him, in order to reduce casualties in completing the occupation of both countries, whereby he became high commissioner and commander-in-chief of naval forces. He was assassinated on December 24, 1942, by Bonnier de la Chapelle. His twenty-year-old assassin was tried by court-martial and executed two days later. As Churchill wrote, this ‘relieved the Allies of their embarrassment in working with him’ (The Second World War, IV, pp. 577–78). Churchill accords Darlan a critical but generous obituary: ‘Few men have paid more heavily for errors of judgment and failure of character than Admiral Darlan. . . . His life’s work had been to recreate the French Navy, and he had raised it to a position it had never held since the days of the French kings. . . . Let him rest in peace, and let us all be thankful we have never had to face the trials under which he broke’ (IV, pp. 579–80).

46

Nicholas Moore (1918–1986) was editor of Spleen, 1938–40 (the title also of a book of his verse, 1973), and assistant to Tambimuttu on Poetry (London) in the 1940s. He produced nine volumes of poetry before 1949; thereafter, Spleen and three posthumously published collections. For his letter to Partisan Review about Orwell’s ‘London Letter’ of April 15, 1941 (CW, XII, pp. 470–9).

47

Alexander Comfort (1920–2000), poet, novelist and medical biologist. His The Joy of Sex (1972) sold over ten million copies. Horizon printed (May 1942, pp. 358–62) his long letter on the alleged absence of war poetry and the reasons for it arguing that three campaigns had been waged against poets. In his contribution to ‘Pacifism and War: A Controversy’ (see CW, XIII, pp. 396–9), Orwell quotes several lines from Comfort’s letter to Horizon.

48

At this time the opening of a second front was almost daily expected. When Dwight D. Eisenhower’s arrival in England was reported in the Daily Express on June 26, 1942, his photograph was headlined: ‘U.S. Second Front general is here.’ Although, in response to Stalin’s demand that a Second Front be opened, consideration was given to a cross-Channel landing in August or September 1942, the first new front (not regarded by most people as a Second Front) was not opened until November 8, 1942, and then in North Africa.

49

Kingsley Martin (1897–1969) left-wing journalist and editor of The New Statesman (1931–60), caused the Indian Section considerable trouble, from what he said and from his squabbling about fees. He was regarded as unreliable by the BBC for not sticking to censored scripts, and was, in effect, barred by the Home Office and Ministry of Information because of his contribution to ‘Answering You,’ broadcast to North America in December 1941.

50

William Empson (1906–83; Kt., 1979), poet, critic, and, before the war, Professor of English, Tokyo and Peking. Like Orwell, he worked for the BBC’s Eastern Service but broadcast to China. He was Professor of English Literature, Sheffield University, 1953–71. He had already achieved scholarly recognition with Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), and Some Versions of Pastoral (1935); among later writings was The Structure of Complex Words (1951). His obituary in The Times described him as ‘the most famously over-sophisticated man of his time who revolutionized our ways of reading a poem’.

51

Lord Winster (Commander R. T. H. Fletcher, 1885–1961), Liberal M.P., 1923–24; Labour M.P., 1935–42, was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty, May 1940–December 1941. The pseudonym ‘Rainsborough’ was then being used by Frank Owen .

52

Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942), head of the Reich Main Security Office (the Gestapo, criminal police, and SS Security Service), deputy to Heinrich Himmler, leading organizer of the Nazi ‘final solution,’ was appointed ‘Protector of Bohemia and Moravia’ in September 1941. On May 27, 1942, he was wounded by Czech patriots trained in England and died on June 4. In reprisal, the village of Lidice was ‘exterminated.’ The population had been about 2,000; very few survived. Humphrey Jennings made a deeply moving film of the incident, as if it had occurred in the Welsh village of Ystradgynlais (The Silent Village, 1943), as part of the British government’s propaganda towards the defeat of Nazism. A copy of the pamphlet describing the film is in Orwell’s collection of pamphlets, now in the British Library. Throughout his manuscript, Orwell spells the village ‘Ladice.’

53

Orwell had written to Hsiao Ch’ien on January 14, 1942 asking for ‘one talk on the ordinary atrocity lines’ in connection with the Japanese invasion of China. This was broadcast on February 26, 1942.

54

The manuscript and typewritten versions differ slightly. Thus, as well as the White Sea Canal, Orwell includes the Ukraine famine, and as well as Abyssinia he includes Cyrenaica, and Nanking is specifically listed as a Japanese atrocity. Against British atrocities he includes the SS Dunera.

55

William Mellor (1888–1942), left-wing journalist and author, edited the Daily Herald, which he had joined in 1903, from 1926 to 1930. He was then Assistant Managing Editor of Odhams Press until he became editor of Tribune, January 1, 1937. He wrote Direct Action (1920) and, with G.D.H. Cole, The Meaning of Industrial Freedom (1918). He was a member of the National Council of the Socialist League.

56

Reynold’s News was a Labour-inclined Sunday newspaper: see Diary of Events Leading up to the War, 9.3.39, n. 2.

57

For William Joyce, who broadcast from Berlin as ‘Lord Haw Haw,’ see War-time Diary, 7.28.40, n. 77.

58

Ras Behari Bose (1880?–1945) was no relation of Subhas Chandra Bose. He had worked for Indian independence since 1911. After the failure of the Cripps Mission, he was asked by the Japanese to make way for Subhas. He agreed and on April 17, 1942, the Japanese Cabinet decided to use Subhas to ‘present policy’ (Mihir Bose, The Lost Hero, pp. 191, 197–8; he spells the name Rash Behari Bose).

59

The sudden fall of Tobruk to Rommel’s forces on June 21, 1942, despite its having held out for eight months in 1941 before being relieved in December of that year. The loss was a blow to morale second only to the fall of Singapore. Twenty-five thousand troops were taken prisoner. For a brief account of what led to the splitting of the Eighth Army in a vain attempt to keep Tobruk, and Churchill’s part in this, see Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War, p. 287; for the retreat to El Alamein, fifty-five miles from Alexandria, see pp. 287–303). Much blame fell on General Sir Claude Auchinleck (and see 5.27.42 n. 40), who was relieved of his command after Churchill visited Cairo, August 4. He was held in high esteem by Rommel, who thought he had handled his forces with considerable skill (Liddell Hart, pp. 301–02). After the war he was given the thankless task of dividing the Indian Army between newly independent India and Pakistan. He did this so well that he was appointed commander of each army by the newly independent governments.

60

This was Orwell’s only break of any length whilst working for the BBC. He stayed at Callow End, Worcestershire and spent much of the time fishing from Sunday, June 28, to Saturday, July 11. He was passionately keen on fishing even though, on this occasion, fish, and the beer, were in short supply. He listed what he caught on the penultimate page of Volume 3 of this War-time Diary. It amounted to eighteen dace (though one might have been a roach), two eels and one perch. On five days he caught nothing.

61

Although some cream-making was permitted for sale locally, production on the normal scale and general distribution had been stopped to conserve resources.

62

Leslie Hore-Belisha was Secretary of State for War, 1937–40; an Independent M.P., 1942–45. Chamberlain appointed him Secretary for War in 1937, but dismissed him in 1940. Churchill did not give him a place in his government, and he remained out of office throughout the war. For his earlier career, see Events, 7.19.39, n. 1.

63

Sir John Wardlaw-Milne (1879–1967) was Unionist M.P. for Kidderminster, 1922–45; Chairman of House of Commons Select Committee on National Expenditure, and author of pamphlets on financial matters. He was strongly opposed to Churchill and moved the vote of censure in which he made this proposal. As Churchill put it, ‘This proved injurious to his case.’ See The Second World War, IV, pp. 356–66, for the debate and Wardlaw-Milne’s proposal in particular.

64

Women’s Royal Naval Service.

65

Presumably the farmer at whose farm Orwell was staying. There is no indication as to whether Eileen was able to get leave at the same time as her husband.

66

Malvern, far inland, might seem an unlikely setting for a naval establishment, but a radar research base and an initial training unit were sited there.

67

Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s army service, now the WRAC, Women’s Royal Army Corps.

68

W. R. Hipwell.

69

Ahmed Ali (1910–1994), Pakistani writer and Professor of English, Bengal. Served as Listener Research Director for the BBC in New Delhi, 1942–45. Worked for the Government of Pakistan, 1949–60. He was co-editor of Indian Writing (London, 1940–45) and Tomorrow Bombay (India, 1942–44). He published in Urdu and English and works in the latter language include Twilight in Delhi (1940) and Ocean of Night (1964), which reflect on the Muslim heritage in India. A critical work, Mr Eliot’s Penny-World of Dreams, was published in 1941.

70

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), General Secretary and then President of the Indian National Congress, was educated at Harrow and Cambridge. After the massacre at Amritsar in 1919, he joined the fight for independence and was particularly associated with Gandhi, although at times they opposed one another’s policies. Frequently imprisoned by the British, he became India’s first prime minister when independence was achieved in 1947.

71

The Ministry of Food (where Eileen worked) promoted a cartoon character, Potato Pete, in a campaign to persuade people to eat a pound of potatoes a day.

72

For General Kliment Voroshilov, see Events, 8.31.39, n.1. Churchill was to meet him, on August 12, 1942, but in Moscow (see Winston Churchill, The Second World War, IV, p. 429).

73

For Vyacheslav Molotov, see Events, 8.28.39, n. 4. Churchill gives an account of a private talk with him at this time in The Second World War (IV, pp. 436–37). A principal issue at stake was the opening of a Second Front.

74

Lieutenant-General Sir W. Douglas S. Brownrigg (1886–1946) was Adjutant-General to the British Expeditionary Force, 1939–40. He retired in 1940 but was appointed Zone and Sector Commander of the Home Guard, 1941.

75

Herbert Read (1893–1968; Kt. 1953), poet, critic, educator and interpreter of modern art. Served in World War 1 (DSO, MC) and was particularly influential in the thirties and forties. He was assistant keeper at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and taught at Edinburgh University, 1931–2. Edited the Burlington Magazine, 1933–39. His Education through Art was an important influence after the war. He was an influential supporter of anarchism after World War 1 at least until he was knighted.

76

The anti-aircraft branch of the Home Guard, under General Sir Frederick Pile (1884–1976, Bt.), was equipped with rocket launchers. These were each capable of firing two one-hundredweight rockets and were massed in batteries of sixty-four. Not all the rockets would necessarily be fired at once. The rockets were not particularly accurate, but they created a ‘box’ of shrapnel capable of damaging and bringing down planes. In my experience on rocket battery 101 at Iver, near Slough, they were not used against low-flying planes in built-up areas because they were liable to sheer off the roofs of houses surrounding the battery. Orwell probably dropped ‘now’ from the typescript because these guns, though to a small extent manned by full-time servicemen, were, like the spigot mortar, chiefly Home Guard weapons.

77

Peter Masefield (1914–2006; Kt. 1972), was war correspondent with the RAF and US Eighth Air Force, 1939–43. Became Chief Executive of British European Airways, 1949–52. He was scheduled to discuss Aviation in one of Orwell’s broadcasts to India on July 31, 1942, with Oliver Stewart (1895–1976, editor of Aeronautics, 1939–62), but when he had to drop out, Orwell engaged E.C. Bowyer who was on the staff of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors.

78

The weekend would have been spent at the Orwells’ cottage at Wallington.

79

Churchill arrived in Cairo on this day, then, via Teheran, reached Moscow on August 12. He and Stalin did discuss the opening of a second front (see The Second World War, IV, pp. 411, 430–33).

80

Cripps came near to resignation but did not leave the War Cabinet until November 22, 1942, the day he was appointed Minister of Aircraft Production, a post he held until the end of the war in Europe.

81

John Macmurray (1891–1976) was Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University of London .

82

After the failure of Cripps’s mission to India, Congress had become increasingly intransigent. At the beginning of August Gandhi inaugurated a campaign of civil disobedience. In attempting to ensure order, the government of India raided Congress headquarters and seized the text of the original draft of the Resolution on Indian Independence submitted to the Congress Working Committee and published it.

83

The following passage is crossed through in the manuscript: ‘The question asked on every side is, “If the Second Front is going to be opened, what point is there in Churchill going to Moscow? He must have gone there to tell them we can’t do it.”’

84

The manuscript originally had ‘we can’t,’ but this is crossed through and altered to read as in typescript.

85

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850–1916; 1st Earl Kitchener), who had reconquered the Sudan (1896–98) and was successful against the Boers in the South African War (1900–02), was regarded as a hero by the British populace. At the outbreak of World War I he was appointed Secretary of State for War. He was drowned when HMS Hampshire, taking him on a mission to Russia, struck a mine. He realized earlier than most the need to raise a large army and rapidly increased the strength of ‘Kitchener’s Army,’ as it was called, from twenty to seventy divisions. He found co-operative work difficult and was less popular with Cabinet colleagues than with the general public. Orwell’s second published work, when still at preparatory school, was a poem on the subject of the loss of Kitchener: see CW, X, p. 24.

86

In 1940 the only sub-machine-gun available to the British army was the American Thompson, but at least 100,000 were lost at sea on the way from the USA causing an urgent need for a cheap home-produced automatic. The Sten, named after its designers, Major R. Vernon Sheppard and Harold J. Turpin, and the place of manufacture, Enfield, cost only £2 10s. It did not rely on machined parts and had no wooden stock. The magazine, based on the German 9mm MP 40, had a tendency to jam or fire single shots unexpectedly. But the Sten proved highly successful and was much favoured by resistance fighters.

87

Abdul Kalam Azad (1888–1958), Indian Nationalist Moslem leader, was spokesman for the Indian National Congress in the 1945 independence negotiations. His India Wins Freedom was published in 1959.

88

Leo Amery, Conservative M.P., was Secretary of State for India, 1940–45; see Events, 7.2.39, n. 5 .

89

All-India Radio.

90

The Moslem League was founded as a religious organisation to protect the interests of Moslems in British India. It supported the Indian National Congress until 1935, when Hindu interests dominated the Congress Party and the League was developed into a political organisation. It was led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah and demanded the partition of India. When Pakistan was created in 1947, the League secured control of its first Constituent Assembly.

91

Sir Reginald Hugh Dorman-Smith (1899–1977) was Governor of Burma in 1941 and during the British withdrawal in 1942.

92

Properly, Glimpses of World History: Being Further Letters to His Daughter, written in Prison, and containing a Rambling Account of History for Young People (Allahabad, 1934); revised edition printed, with fifty maps by J. F. Horrabin in 1939 by Lindsay Drummond. According to Inez Holden, in a private communication, Orwell thought of asking Drummond to publish his and her war diaries.

93

Georges Kopp (1902–51), presented himself in many fictional forms but there is no doubt that he was Orwell’s commandant in Spain, a brave man who worked for the French secret service and then MI5. One remarkable irony was that one of those involved in recruiting him for MI5 was the traitor, Anthony Blunt (1907–83). Orwell and he were friends and, despite Orwell’s perspicacity in seeing through those such as Peter Smollett, he went along with Kopp’s stories of himself. Bert Govaerts of Antwerp has uncovered a great deal of Kopp’s life and fictions: see The Lost Orwell, pp. 83–91.

94

The Dieppe raid proved, at least in the short term, a sad waste except in so far as it brought home to senior servicemen the lessons to be learned for future landings. More than 6,000 men, mainly Canadian, were involved and well over half were killed, wounded, or captured. Churchill states that of 5,000 Canadians, 18% were killed and nearly 2,000 were captured (The Second World War, IV, p. 459). All 27 tanks landed were almost immediately destroyed; the RAF lost 70 planes, and 34 ships were sunk. The Germans admitted losing 297 killed and 294 wounded or captured, and 48 planes. The newspapers claimed in headlines at the time, ‘Big Hun Losses’ (Daily Mirror, August 20, 1942), but as The War Papers, 22 (1977) put it, ‘they might have added, “Even Bigger Allied Losses”.’ David Astor served in the Royal Marines, 1940–45, and was decorated with the Croix de Guerre.

95

It was alleged that the Germans had cracked British codes and so had advance notice of the raid, but it seems that the first warning was given by German trawlers just as the Allied flotilla approached the coast. The failure of the raid was publicly put down to ‘careless talk’ or even to an advertisement for soap flakes which showed a woman pruning a tree dressed in what was headlined as ‘BEACH COAT from DIEPPE.’ A newspaper cutting of this advertisement, which appeared in the Daily Telegraph, 8.15.42, was annotated by Orwell, ‘Advert, popularly believed to have given the Germans advance warning of the Dieppe raid.’ (The cutting is in Box 39 of Orwell’s pamphlet collection in the British Library .) The film Next of Kin (1942), made to drive home the lesson that careless talk could endanger such enterprises, began its life as a shorter services training film. Churchill maintains, ‘Our postwar examination of their records shows that the Germans did not receive, through leakages of information, any special warning of our attention to attack’ (The Second World War, IV, p. 458).

96

The Daily Worker had been suppressed on January 22, 1941.

97

Laurence Frederic Rushbrook Williams (1890–1978; CBE, 1923; Orwell sometimes hyphenated his name, as here), had been Professor of Modern Indian History, Allahabad University, 1914–19, and Director of the Indian Central Bureau of Information, 1920–26. He was Director of the BBC’s Eastern Service from 1941 to November 1944. He then joined The Times (to 1955). His attitude to India was enlightened and is well expressed in his India (Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairs, 1940). He also wrote The State of Pakistan, 1962, and The East Pakistan Tragedy, 1972.

98

In The Dynasts, Napoleon places the crown on his own head in Milan Cathedral, not in Rome (Complete Edition, 1910, 35; Part I, Act I, Scene 6). Orwell discussed The Dynasts in Tribune, September 18, 1942 (CW, XIV, pp. 42–5).

99

The Left Book Club, founded by Victor Gollancz in 1936, still published a book a month on anti-Fascist or Socialist topics. Local group meetings had been revived in the middle of 1942, and some fifty branches were formed. The Road to Wigan Pier was published under its auspices.

100

Sir Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969) was educated at Eton and served in the Grenadier Guards, 1912–19. In 1916 his poetry, with his sister Edith’s, was published as Twentieth-Century Harlequinade. He also wrote short stories (Triple Fugue, 1924; Open the Door, 1941), a number of novels, including Before the Bombardment (1926), The Man Who Lost Himself (1929), Those Were the Days (1938), A Place of One’s Own (1941), many essays and some critical studies (particularly on Dickens). He selected and arranged the text of William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast (1931). Orwell described his Left Hand, Right Hand!, The Scarlet Tree, and Great Morning! (1944–47) as ‘among the best autobiographies of our time’; see CW, XIX, pp. 385–8.

101

Laurence Brander (1903–?) author and lecturer in English literature in India for twelve years before the war, was employed by the BBC as Intelligence Officer, Eastern Service, 1941–44. In 1954 his study George Orwell was published. Pages 8–9 give a succinct insight to Orwell at the BBC:

102

The Germans chained some 2,500 Allied prisoners (mainly Canadian) taken at Dieppe because they claimed that British Commandos had chained their German prisoners. The British War Office denied this. Canada then manacled 1,376 German prisoners. On October 15, the Swiss Red Cross offered to mediate. See Orwell’s (unpublished) letter to the Times, October 12, 1942, in which he argues that by such retaliation we ‘descend . . . to the level of our enemies’ (CW, XIV, pp. 97–8). On October 18, Hitler ordered German troops to shoot all captured Allied Commandos ‘to the last man.’

103

This is presumably a reference to the mysterious and unexplained ‘College’ to which Orwell refers from time to time .

104

Orwell traced the telling of ‘Jew-jokes’ as an example of anti-Semitism.

105

Following the attack launched at El Alamein on October 23, 1942, the Eighth Army cleared Egypt by November 11, 1942; Tobruk, in Libya, was retaken on November 12. Allied forces landed in Morocco and Algeria on November 8, and by November 12 were close to the western Tunisian border. Final victory in North Africa, however, was not to come until mid-May 1943.

1

Orwell attended the funeral of his sister Marjorie, Humphrey Dakin’s wife. The funeral probably took place on May 6, 1946. See his letter to Dakin, May 8, 1946, CW, XVIII, p. 309.

2

‘This area’ was Biggar, some thirty miles southwest of Edinburgh and thirty-five miles southeast of Glasgow. Georges and Doreen Kopp had taken a farm there, and Orwell stayed with them for a week. (Doreen was Gwen O’Shaughnessy’s half-sister; for George Kopp, see Second War-time Diary, 8.18.42, n. 93) . Orwell did not have Richard with him at Biggar.

3

Orwell more than once refers to himself as being ‘a bad shot’ but that was typical of his self-denigration.

4

The ‘nearby hill’ was presumably either Broad Law, 2,723 feet, or Dollar Law, 2,681 feet, both about a dozen miles southeast of Biggar. The hills close to Biggar are 1,200 to 1,400 feet in height.

5

Orwell visited Eileen’s grave in St. Andrew’s and Jesmond Cemetery, two or three miles north of Newcastle upon Tyne, whilst at Biggar. The return journey by road would be a little over two hundred miles.

6

The hooded crow (Corvus corni x) .

7

Donald Darroch and his sister Katie had a croft a mile or so from Barnhill, at Kinuachdrachd. Orwell went there every day for milk until he bought a cow. He and Donald, who worked on a profit-sharing basis with Orwell’s laird, Robin Fletcher, were very friendly. Often referred to by Orwell as ‘D.D.’ and ‘K.D.’

8

Some of Orwell’s diaries have not been traced, including the one referred to here.

9

Glentrosdale is on the west coast of Jura; it is about two miles as the crow flies from Kinuachdrachd (Orwell always omitted the final ‘d’).

10

Glengarrisdale Bay is on the western side of Jura, about four miles from the north tip of the island and 3½ miles as the crow flies due west of Barnhill.

11

This is one of a number of less well-known massacres perpetrated by the Campbells, not that of the Macdonalds at Glencoe, some fifty miles to the north, in 1692.

12

Avril (usually as ‘A.’) was Orwell’s younger sister. It was Avril who would care for Orwell’s son, Richard Blair, after Orwell’s death.

13

About fifteen miles is correct.

14

The coastline north and south of Glentrosdale Bay is indented. Orwell presumably has in mind the bay to the north of Glentrosdale, Bagh Gleann nam Muc, and that to the south, Bàgh Uamh Mhor.

15

A wading bird with coot-like feet.

16

The sweetbriar (or eglantine), rosa rubiginosa, does have single pink flowers, strong thorns, and a pleasant scent. The word ‘briar’ (or ‘brier’) can also be given to the wild, or dog, rose (rosa canina), which also has a single pink flower.

17

The two vehicles were, presumably, the lorry bought from Kopp and the motor-bike. In his entry for July 7, Orwell seems to refer to a car – the word is not clear – but he had no car. Fuel, like much else, was severely rationed.

18

Malcolm M’Kechnie, headman at Ardlussa; he had ten children. Orwell sometimes spells his name, as here, ‘McKechnie.’

19

Orwell went to London to collect his son, Richard.

20

Craighouse is about twenty-three miles south of Barnhill.

21

This reads like ‘care’; Orwell had no car, but ‘care’ does not make sense. Perhaps he contributed two gallons of petrol (bearing in mind that petrol was rationed) to the car owner who ferried visitors to Barnhill. He advised Sally McEwan to ‘ask for the hired car at McKechnie’s shop’ (July 5, 1946, CW, XVIII, p. 339). Orwell also mentions bribing the driver to carry on along a very poor road; the ‘bribe’ may not always have been in cash (in writing to Michael Meyer he suggests 5s 0d) but possibly in petrol.

22

Borrowed by the Fletchers; see Diary, 8.20.46. Ardlussa was seven to eight miles south of Barnhill as the crow flies. The Ardlussa Estate had been inherited by Robin Fletcher, formerly an Eton housemaster. He and his wife, Margaret, set about restoring the estate and developing crofting. Her interview for the BBC Arena programme of 1984 is reproduced in Orwell Remembered, pp. 225–9. She vividly describes how she remembered Orwell: ‘how ill, how terribly ill, he looked – and drawn: a sad face he had. . . . I think he very much missed his wife . . . He was devoted to Richard.’

23

A permit was required to purchase such materials which were in short supply.

24

Perhaps Orwell had at the back of his mind the disastrous outcome of Flory’s attempt to have a leopard skin cured for Elizabeth in Burmese Days (CW, II, pp. 224–27).

25

Angus M’Kechnie, who lived in Ardlussa.

26

Grampus griseus: a cetacean resembling a dolphin but lacking its beak-like snout.

27

Possibly ‘brood’ is intended, but the double ‘e’ is clearly so written.

28

Donald and Katie Darroch. There is in Remembering Orwell a brief but telling memoir of Orwell by Katie Darroch. She describes Orwell as ‘cheery and happy in his own way’ – and a great fan of her scones! (pp. 174–5).

29

The total of 8½ gallons (and on the 24th of 9½ gallons) minus two is to represent the two gallons borrowed by Ardlussa; see 7.7.46 and n. 22 . Orwell’s concern was not, of course, that the two gallons had not been paid back, but to estimate accurately how his ration of petrol was lasting.

30

Like much else, coal was rationed. Six tons would have been the allowance for a year.

31

Ian and Angus M’Kechnie. Ian was an estate worker at Ardlussa and lived at Inverlussa; Angus was a lobster fisherman and, unlike Ian and Malcolm M’Kechnie, was not on the Astors’ payroll.

32

Stems, usually of straw but particularly applicable to peas, beans and potatoes.

33

A leading firm of seedsmen (as Carters Tested Seeds today).

34

Scabiosa succisa.

35

Orwell records that he was stung by a wasp – ‘hitherto we have not seen any’ – on August 6.

36

A and I: probably Avril and Inez Holden.

37

Trade names of paraffin heaters.

38

At the end of the war the basic weekly food ration included 4 ozs bacon; 8 ozs made up of butter, margarine and lard; 3 ozs of cheese (which was three times the 1940 ration); 2 ozs tea; and 1s 2d (6 new pence, say £1.80 today) of meat some of which must be corned beef. Luxury foods such as tinned fruit, fish, and meat were rationed according to a points system and an adult could expect about three eggs a month. It was not permitted to make cream. Even after the war, ingredients for making better than basic bakery products were not available except to those taking professional bakery courses at technical schools in order to keep the techniques alive. Clothes also were rationed and at times after the war bread and potatoes were rationed. Petrol was rationed at five gallons per month and coal was rationed. Resentment was caused when rations were reduced to allow food to be diverted to Germany, then near starvation. It was not until July 1954 that meat was taken off ration. In some country districts (as here on Jura) some foods were more freely available.

39

In Scotland, in places where there are no trees, rooks and hooded crows nest on the ground, usually among heather.

40

An Edinburgh nurseryman who sold by mail order. In 2009, as Dobies of Devon, Torquay. Orwell’s spelling is retained.

41

Presumably ‘the W-shaped bays next to Glentrosdale’ .

42

All items are ticked except ‘Square off edges’ and ‘Grease tools . . . bike),’ which are unmarked; ‘Lime as much of soil as possible’ and ‘Collect seaweed / leaf mould,’ against each of which is a cross; and ‘Make cover . . . iron?)’ and ‘Drag up boat,’ which are crossed through. All the question marks are Orwell’s.

43

‘beans’ presumably means bean poles. Orwell makes the letter ‘m’ quite clearly on this page so it is unlikely that ‘beams’ is intended.

44

‘Radio’ and ‘Mowing machine’ are ticked. The question mark is Orwell’s.

45

Orwell did not return until January (see Diary entries below for that month).

46

‘morning’ was initially bracketed against the first three tasks but it was crossed through to enclose only the first two. There are ticks beside tasks 1, 2, 5, and 6.

47

Greenwich Mean Time; clocks would have been put back one hour from Summer Time – hence dark before 7 p.m. instead of 8 p.m.

1

Donald Darroch and Katie his sister. Often as D.D. and K.D.

2

R.= Richard, Orwell’s two-year-old son (usually as ‘R’ but that can also stand for Richard Rees). The only doctor on Jura was at Craighouse, some 25 miles to the south by poor roads.

3

Orwell and his sister Avril (usually as A.).

4

Double British Summer Time. To aid daylight saving, clocks were advanced one hour from late spring to early autumn; during the war and in the years immediately after, clocks were advanced for one hour throughout the year and for a second hour during the ‘summer’ period. The measure was particularly unpopular with farmers. By ‘three different times’, Orwell probably means DBST, Summer Time (time advanced by only one hour), and ‘natural time,’ that which regulated farm and stock management.

5

American Pillar (which Orwell spells with small ‘p’) is a carmine pink climbing rose with a white eye and golden stamens.

6

Albéric Barbier is a vigorous climbing rose with a creamy white flower with a yellow centre. It was introduced by the same raiser as Albertine, the rose Orwell grew so successfully at his cottage at Wallington before the war. Orwell omitted the accent.

7

Alastair M’Kechnie and the Darrochs, the brother and sister Donald and Katie.

8

Duggie (Dougie?) Clark worked on the Astors’ estate at Tarbert, as, probably, did Neal (Neil?) McArthur.

9

May and Baker, makers of sulphonamides, and the drug sulphapyridine, used to treat pneumonia, and commonly known by the manufacturer’s initials.

10

A cross of Rhode Island Reds with White Leghorns.

11

A cetacean resembling a dolphin but lacking its beak-like snout. Properly Risso’s dolphin, but used generally of whales of different kinds.

12

Janet M’Kechnie; Orwell uses the forms M’Kechnie and McKechnie.

13

Ian M’Kechnie. Glengarrisdale Bay is on the western side of Jura, almost directly opposite Barnhill.

14

A proprietary brand of poultry feed.

15

Scarba lies to the north of Jura; the islands are separated by the Gulf of Corryvreckan.

16

Bill Dunn. William Dunn (1921–1992) had been an officer in the army, but after the loss of a leg had been invalided out. He came to Jura to farm in 1947. After five months he moved down from his farm above Barnhill and joined Orwell and his sister, Avril. He later entered into a partnership with Richard Rees to farm Barnhill. He married Avril in 1951 and they brought up Richard, Orwell’s son. See transcript of Bill Dunn’s interview by Nigel Williams in Orwell Remembered, pp. 231–35; also Remembering Orwell, pp. 182–85. In February and March 2009, Richard Blair contributed very interesting essay to the Eric & Us website (www.finlay-publisher.com), reproduced on the Orwell Prize website. This essay is archived.

17

That is, in its summer plumage.

18

This could be ‘can’ but ‘car’ is clear at 7.3.47.

19

Toad flax or field snapdragon.

20

In order to preserve them for use in the winter. Eggs preserved in waterglass could not be used as boiled eggs; they had to be used for cooking or, at a pinch, they might be scrambled.

21

Metaldehyde, used in solid block form as a fuel from 1924, and as a slug-killer from 1938.

22

Sir Richard Rees (1900–1970), editor, painter, and critic; he and Orwell became friends through The Adelphi, and Rees was to be Orwell’s literary executor. He came to Jura to paint and stayed with Orwell until September. In his George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory he gives a good account of Orwell’s life on Jura; and see passages reprinted in Orwell Remembered (pp. 115–23). One passage epitomises Orwell on Jura: ‘Life on the isle of Jura revealed clearly another not unexpected characteristic, namely, his enthusiasm for heroic and desperate remedies. The district was supposed to be infested by adders [see, for example, 6.22.47] and Orwell greatly relished the idea – though I can imagine no one who would be more reluctant to apply it – of the cigar cure for snake bites. This consisted, according to him, in lighting a cigar and then stubbing it out against the wound’ (p. 152; Orwell Remembered, p . 122).

23

Orwell writes this as ‘Ling’ but he must mean the island of Luing, rather than its adjacent islet of Lunga or a place on the mainland also called Lunga; all three are within about half-a-dozen miles of the northern tip of Jura. What tilts the likelihood towards Luing is the report of Orwell’s escape from the whirlpool of Corryvreckan in the Glasgow Herald, August 30, 1947. This states that two fishermen came to the aid of Orwell’s party and that they came from Toberonochy, island of Luing.’ See 8.19.47, n. 35.

24

The results of Orwell’s examinations to enter the Indian Imperial Police in 1922 show that although he was awarded particularly high marks for Latin and Greek he came 21st of 23 candidates in the riding test, receiving 104 marks out of 200 (the pass mark being 100). He would have ridden since then, especially in Burma.

25

Rees recalls this incident in his book: ‘his sister dislocated her arm in jumping over a wall. Orwell rushed back to the house and called to me: “You’ve done first aid, haven’t you? [Rees served with an ambulance unit on the Madrid front in the Spanish civil war.] Avril’s put her arm out. You’ll be able to get it back? You just have to jerk it sharply upwards, isn’t that it?” The remedy did not work, perhaps because I didn’t summon up enough sharpness (Orwell made no attempt to summon up any) and we had to drive the twenty-five miles to the doctor, who was also unsuccessful’ (his George Orwell, p. 152; Orwell Remembered, p. 122). See also 7.7.47.

26

Because the doctor at Craighouse could not set Avril’s dislocated arm, Donald Darroch, Bill Dunn, and Richard Rees took her across the Sound of Jura (about six miles, direct sailing – but see 8.16.47) to the little port of Crinan on the mainland and then a further six miles by road to Lochgilphead, which lies on the shore of Loch Fyne. By the time she had her arm set, Avril had been driven some fifty miles on Jura’s rough roads, sailed six miles, and then been driven a further six, before making the return trip of a dozen miles.

27

Rees, in his George Orwell, says that Orwell was ‘certainly happy’ on Jura, ‘working in the garden, fishing for mackerel from a boat, being bullied by his adopted son’ (p. 149; Orwell Remembered, 120).

28

Brandy, presumably; see 4.14.47 .

29

Lealt Burn runs from two small lochs a little south and to the west of Barnhill down to the Sound of Jura about five miles south of Barnhill; the small hamlet of Lealt stands where the road from Barnhill to Ardlussa crosses Lealt Burn.

30

Orwell’s niece, Jane Dakin. Crick notes: ‘That summer Humphrey Dakin, now a widower, sent his daughters, teenage Lucy and her sister Jane, just leaving the Women’s Land Army, to stay with their aunt and uncle for a longer holiday. Their elder brother Henry also turned up, then a second lieutenant in the Army on leave. They liked their uncle Eric, though for days on end they hardly saw him, just like at Leeds [their home town] when they were small children, except at mealtimes since he worked almost without interruption’ (p. 527). See also Shelden, p. 461.

31

Camping on the Atlantic side of Jura, in a shepherd’s hut more or less opposite Barnhill.

32

Loch nan Eilean is about one mile inland from the west coast at Glengarrisdale and some 2½ to 3 miles as the crow flies from Barnhill.

33

Fuel was strictly rationed, but sometimes supplementary supplies were allowed against specially issued coupons.

34

‘an arc’ makes sense, but the writing looks more like ‘a one,’ which makes no sense.

35

The whirlpool in the Gulf of Corryvreckan, between Jura and Scarba, was – and still is – extremely dangerous. Orwell makes light of this escapade, but they were singularly fortunate not to be drowned. Crick reproduces Henry Dakin’s graphic account (pp. 527–29) and Orwell’s statement that the story was reported to the Daily Express (in his letter to Anthony Powell, September 8, 1947 ). It has not been traced in the London editions of the Daily Express held by the British Library; a search of the Scottish Daily Express made on the editor’s behalf by Mrs. Helen Stokes in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, and by Mr. Telfer Stokes in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, proved fruitless. No copies were held in Edinburgh; in Glasgow there were no copies of a Scottish edition for August; no mention was made in the September issues (from the second number of which the masthead name changed from Daily Express to Scottish Daily Express). It was reported by the Glasgow Herald, August 30, 1947. This stated: ‘They had gone to see the whirlpool when their motor-boat was drawn into one of the smaller whirlpools and overturned. Fortunately, with Mr Blair’s help, they all reached a small islet from which, after several hours, they were rescued by two fishermen from Toberonochy, island of Luing.’ Luing is north of Scarba, and Toberonochy is six or seven miles from the north tip of Jura and a little further from Eilean Mór, the islet referred to. Both Donald Darroch and Ian McKechnie stoutly defended Orwell: Orwell knew well what he was doing, even though he might have taken more advice: he had simply misread the tide tables which was ‘easy enough to do’ (Crick, p. 529).

36

Eilean Mór is a little island some five hundred yards off the northwest tip of Jura. Orwell omits the accent.

37

Loch a Bhùrra lies a little to the southeast of Loch nan Eilean and is midway between the east and west coasts of Jura. Orwell spells it ‘Bura.’

38

Probably Gwen O’Shaughnessy, Eileen’s sister-in-law, who came up to Jura with her children (Crick, 527).

39

Kainit is the German name for hydrous magnesium sulphate with potassium chloride (found in salt deposits); it was used as a fertiliser.

40

Crossed through.

41

Crossed through; ‘Barbed wire’ is probably a substitution.

42

These are presumably the dates when Orwell expected his books to be published in the Uniform Edition. Coming Up for Air was published in May 1948; Burmese Days, January 1949; Down and Out in Paris and London, September 1949; Homage to Catalonia, February 1951; Critical Essays, February 22, 1951. Animal Farm appeared in a cheap edition, similar in appearance to the Uniform Edition, in June 1949, but was not re-set until October 1965 for the Collected Edition.

43

Orwell was too ill to leave Jura to give this lecture. The St Pancras Borough Librarian, Frederick Sinclair, was keen to develop cultural activities and would almost certainly have been going to introduce Orwell.

44

Presumably money received by Orwell, although whether £7,826 8s 7d was the amount received on June 19, 1947, or up until that date is not known. After the publication of Animal Farm, he certainly received much larger royalties and fees than those recorded for earlier years in his Payments Book.

45

= £2.17½p in today’s currency (value roughly 30 times higher).

46

The Lussa River runs southeast across Jura into the sea via Ardlussa and Inverlussa.

47

Rankin was a greengrocer on the mainland.

48

The 4 eggs added to the 444 of 10.10.47 should, of course, give a total of 448. Totals hereafter are 3 short.

49

An entry has been crossed through between October 14 and 15. The day of the month cannot be deciphered, but the entry reads: ‘Very stormy last night & sea rough this morning. Raining a good deal of the day, but wind dropping by afternoon. Sea fairly calm by evening.’ This suggests that entries were not always made at the end of the day to which they refer or, at the latest, on the following day; Orwell would otherwise have remembered what the weather was like on what must have been October 15, especially because it was so very different from that of the fourteenth. On the other hand, it might be a by-product of his developing illness.

50

Orwell’s radio (like many others in the 1930s and 1940s) did not run on mains electricity but on two accumulators (high and low tension) which had from time to time to be recharged.

51

‘is’ originally followed by the sudden reappearance of this episode in my mind after it had been forgotten for years which was crossed through.

52

‘memory’ originally followed by was aware that it had never crossed my mind for years past, which was crossed through.

53

See 8.12.42 (p. 403) for possible origin of this memory.

1

Bob was the horse.

2

This must be the lighthouse at Crinan, on the mainland, six miles east-southeast of Barnhill. From the ridge to the east of Barnhill, the coast of the mainland is easily visible; see Shelden, plate facing p. 373, and, for a grander perspective, the fine colour illustration in Die Stern, Kultur Journal, 1983, ‘Die Insel des Grossen Bruders (wo George Orwell “1984” schrieb),’ pp. 192–202, by Dorothee Kruse; photographs by Klaus Meyer-Andersen.

3

Angus M’Kechnie, a lobster fisherman who lived at Ardlussa (but was not on the Astors’ payroll). It is not always clear whether Orwell writes McKechnie or M’Kechnie; the latter is used in this edition.

4

Presumably a family name for one of the local bays reflecting the prevalence of mosquitos there.

5

Not traced.

6

Crick, plate 30, shows Barnhill in 1948 with a tent in front of it. This, as the caption to this illustration in Bowker suggests, was used for harvest workers – which were presumably ‘the others’ Orwell refers to here. See 8.23.48 for a reference to the tent being blown down.

7

Possibly Sir Richard Rees, but Tony Rozga, Orwell’s Polish neighbour, and even his son Richard are possible (see his letter to Michael Meyer, August 22, 1948, CW, XIX, 423–4 ). In his Diary entry for 8.31.48 he refers to Rozga as ‘Tony.’ Avril, in her letter to Michael Kennard, July 29, 1948, said: ‘Richard Rees is also here for a day or two’; his visit might have been extended or repeated. However one of the Rozgas is likely to have helped with such tasks as dipping sheep (8.23.48).

8

Wallflowers, if left in the ground, will usually flower a second year, though they are inclined to become leggy.

9

Again, it cannot be quite certain who is cutting corn, Richard Rees or Tony Rozga, though Rozga is more likely here.

10

‘ashes’ is slightly uncertain; Orwell may have wanted to obtain a supply to lay on the paths.

11

Colonsay is a much smaller island than Jura, lying some fifteen miles to its west; the journey by boat would have been about twice that distance.

12

Orwell had returned to Hairmyres Hospital for an examination by Mr. Dick. See his letter to David Astor at October 9, 1948, below.

13

Gigha is a small island lying southwest of Jura.

14

Avril and, presumably, Ian M’Kechnie, an estate worker at Ardlussa who lived at Inverlussa. The ‘I.’ cannot be Orwell himself: the full point is quite clear .

15

Trade name for a room heater fuelled by paraffin.

16

Malcolm M’Kechnie, Ian’s father.

17

Despite the ‘apparently’, this is Orwell’s own entry.

18

Twenty feet: Orwell must mean twenty inches (20").

19

Robert Shaw was a building contractor who lived at Lagg, which lies on the coast road about fifteen miles south of Barnhill.

20

Orwell asked Julian Symons to obtain a Biro for him on December 26, 1947, enclosing £3 to pay for it. There is no other record of Biros being bought in 1948.

21

Ian M’Kechnie.

22

It is clear from the past entries that Orwell has been able to do virtually no physical work in the garden; on November 15 he told Anthony Powell he could not so much as pull up a weed and that to walk even a few hundred yards upset him. Thus, his feeling very bad is a result of simply going outside, not going out to help with the garden. This is the period when he is typing the final version of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and, from the way his Biro has run out, also revising.

23

Presumably Orwell’s son, Richard. In his letter to David Astor, November 19, 1948, he wrote that Richard ‘goes fishing with the others and caught several fish the other day’.

24

A pram (or, more properly, praam) is a flat-bottomed dinghy with squared-off bow. In Orwell’s phrase ‘dinghy’ is tautological.

25

National insurance stamps, required by law, presumably for himself as a self-employed person or for Bill Dunn as Orwell’s and Richard Rees’s employee.

1

The Home Service would correspond to Radio 4 today and the Light programme to Radio 1 or 2. Radio 3 was then the Third Programme and more or less the same in content and style.

2

The National Health Service began its ‘cradle to grave’ care on July 5, 1948, but there was still also private care for those who wished to pay for it.

3

Orwell’s room, Number 65 in the Private Wing, is illustrated in Thompson’s Orwell’s London, p. 102; the Private Wing is shown on p. 101.