![]() ![]() Setting aside what this makes me feel (and passing up a chance to get all biographical), this excerpt captures a lot about Orwell – both what he thinks, and what he fears others will think as well. ‘Look what you’ve made me do!’ he said furiously.” The bone handle went flying across the room. He continued for a length of time that frightened and astonished me – about five minutes, it seemed – ending up by breaking the riding-crop. ‘How dare you say such a thing like that? Do you think that is the proper thing to say? Go in and REPORT YOURSELF AGAIN!’ That’s the question I asked myself as I re-read these essays, and I picked out three things which have made him so durable. Yet Orwell stands, as undulled as gold and as permanent as diamond. His entire intellectual milieu and everything they made is lost as the Pharaohs. Most of his essays (of which this is another collection) were published in organs that have either folded or whose circulation today wouldn’t fill the stands at a third division football club. Here’s a man with a love of doomed causes –Spanish republicans, democratic socialism, second hand bookshops. It’s odd when you stop to think about it. ![]()
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