CHECK OUT the link on the right to George Orwell’s diaries from the 1930s.
Of course Orwell, whose real name was Eric Blair, wrote 1984 and also found himself in the thick of things during the Spanish Civil War, in the crossfire between the anarchists and the agitprops.
Animal Farm is one of his tomes too. In the 1960s it was one of the texts that us kids had to learn to get our English GCEs. I failed. He worked for British Intelligence during the Second World War – although he was an anarchist, he appeared to be quite a conformist too. His diaries from the 1930s show he quite liked eggs, the definite mark of a conformer.
In the fight against the Spanish Fascists, celebrated in one of his rather less read but beautifully written books, Homage to Catalonia, he found himself in one of Dante’s Hells. The hell being that though he was obviously an anarchist, the commies and the fascists wanted to kill him.
Anarchism gets a bad press, even in the 21st century, but Barcelona was a model of what can be done by folk who have a sense of community.
And oddly, modern Barcelona is still a pretty free city. A pretty fair biography of Eric Blair is here. ♣
