Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays

by George Orwell

  29. Possibly Michael, the owner of the small clothing factory mentioned in Orwell's diary entry of 3.9.40; see 95.

  30. 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.

  31. "New Statesman" seems probable here.

  32. Probably Richard Crossman (1907-1974), scholar, intellectual, journalist, and left-wing politician, who was assistant editor of The New Statesman, 1938-1955, and Labour MP, 1945-1970.

  33. 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.

  34. Aneurin (Nye) Bevan (1897-1960) was a Labour MP and a director of Tribune when Orwell wrote for that journal, and allowed Orwell complete freedom to say what he wished against current party policy. G. R. Strauss (1901-1993, Life Peer, 1979) was a Labour MP and codirector of Tribune.

  35. Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940). Conservative prime minister associated with the appeasement of Hitler, though he initiated the rearmament of Britain. Chamberlain's government fell on May 10, 1940, and a coalition government under Winston Churchill was formed. Magnanimously, Churchill included Chamberlain in his cabinet.

  36. Rayner Heppenstall.

  37. "Unblimping" was a frequent concern of Orwell's. See, for example, "Wartime Diary," 92, 23.8.40.

  38. Not certainly identified. Possibly Richard Crossman again (see n. 32 above) or Cyril Connolly.

  39. See "My Country Right or Left," 52-58.

  40. Jean Chiappe (1878-1940), Corsican head of the Paris police, 1927-1934, was pro-Fascist and responsible for severely repressive measures against the left. For Orwell on Chiappe's death, see 107.

  41. Henri Philippe Petain (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.

  42. Pierre Laval (1883-1945) held various offices in French governments and was premier 1931-1932 and 1935-1936. 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 (1880-1959, Viscount Templewood, 1944), 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.

  43. Pierre-Etienne Flandin (1889-1958) held numerous offices in French governments. He was premier 1934-1935, and foreign minister in Petains 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.

  44. Eileen Blair and Gwen O'Shaughnessy, her sister-in-law.

  45. 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.

  46. 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 Minitrue of 1984.

  47. R. A. Butler (1902-1984; Life Peer, 1965) was Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1938-1941, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and later Foreign Secretary in the Conservative government of 1951-1964.

  48. Sir Samuel Hoare (see n. 42, above) was at this time British Ambassador to Spain.

  49. L. H. Myers was a novelist and good friend to Orwell.

  50. 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.

  51. 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. After the war, he was interim president 1945-1946. He returned to power in 1958 as a result of the crisis in Algeria, and, as architect and president of the Fifth Republic, 1959-1969, maintained France's military and strategic independence.

  52. Italo Balbo (1896-1940), head of the Italian Air Force, was responsible for the bombing of Ethiopians during the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-1936.

  53. Cyril Connolly.

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

  55. The home of Gwen O'Shaughnessy in Greenwich.

  56. 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 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 here is a result of Orwell's cut.

  57. 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 Fuhrer.

  58. Buenaventura Durruti (1896-1936), a gunman who became a general and popular leader. He was killed in the defense 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.

  59. On July 3, the Royal Navy under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir John Somerville attacked French warships at Oran and Mers el-Kebir, in 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 two battleships, two cruisers, eight destroyers, some two hundred small craft, and a number of submarines. Crews had the option of joining the Allies or being repatriated.

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

  61. Vernon Bartlett (1894-1983), author of many books of political affairs, was at this time a leading liberal political journalist. He won a sensational by-election in 1938 as an Independent MP opposing the Munich Agreement.

  62. Edward, Duke of Windsor (1894-1972), had, as Prince of Wales, been extremely popular, and had expressed 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.

  63. 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 an
d he met in January 1940, with Fredric Warburg and others. The outcome of a series of further meetings was Searchlight Books, of which The Lion and the Unicorn (1941) was the first; see 306, n. 1.

  64. Unidentified; possibly Fredric Warburg.

  65. See 71, 17.6.40 regarding evacuation of children to Canada.

  66. David Lloyd George (1863-1945, Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor, 1945), Liberal prime minister 1916-1922, had, like Petain, 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.

  67. Unidentified.

  68. On July 16, 1940, Hitler had said, in 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).

  69. 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. 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.

  70. Sir Oswald Mosley, Bt. (1896-1980) was successively a Conservative, Independent, and Labour MP. In 1931 he broke away from the Labour Party to form the 'New Party." Later he became fanatically pro-Hitler and turned his party into the British Union of Fascists. He was interned early in the war.

  71. Jacques Doriot (1898-1945), a Communist who had turned to Fascism, was leader of the Parti Populaire Francais, which was financed by the Germans. He was behind the formation of La Legion des volontaires francais contre bolchevisme (the LVF)--a first step in military collaboration with Germany during the occupation.

  72. 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.

  73. 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, 1931-1935; Secretary of State for Air, 1935-1938; Chairman of the United Kingdom Commercial Corporation, 1940-1942; Cabinet Minister Resident in West Africa, 1942-1944; and Minister of Civil Aviation, 1944-1945.

  74. 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 only 915 were lost. To what extent this was deliberate official exaggeration and to what degree overenthusiastic reporting by pilots is difficult to assess.

  75. The Orwells' dog, a large poodle.

  76. This is probably George Mason, a medical consultant and friend of the O'Shaughnessy family.

  77. Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), a leader of the October 1917 revolution in Russia, and Commissar for Foreign Affairs and for War, 1917-1924, 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.

  78. David Low (1891-1963) was a political cartoonist of left-wing views.

  79. Unidentified.

  80. Passed over for promotion.

  81. "Art of Knowing What Gives One Pleasure," Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler, chosen and edited by A. T. Bartholomew (1934), 165-66. This book was reviewed by Orwell in 1934.

  82. In this raid, the first bombs fell on central London; St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate, was hit. Although 11-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 three hundred 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 thirty-six 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 five thousand feet, anything might be hit.

  83. A suburb of London about a mile from where Orwell was living in Chagford Street.

  84. Richard Rees.

  85. Unidentified.

  86. 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:

  Killed Injured

  October 1940 6,334 8,695

  November 4,588 6,202

  December 3,793 5,244

  January 1941 1,500 2,012

  February 789 1,068

  March 4,259 5,557

  In the devastation of Coventry on November 16 (code-named "Moonlight Sonata" by the Germans), 554 people were killed of a population of a quarter of a million; only one German plane was shot down. Throughout the war, 60,595 civilians were killed by enemy action. This stands in contrast to 30,248 members of the Merchant Marine; 50,75 8 Royal Navy; 69,606 RAF; and 144,079 Army. Of some 36,500 civilians killed in air raids to the end of 1941, more than 20,000 died in London, more than 4,000 in Liverpool, more than 2,000 in Birmingham, and nearly 2,000 in Glasgow.

  87. Probably the "M" mentioned in diary entry of 16.6.40, see 70. Fifty pounds would be about a week's wages for a total of ten to twelve people.

  88. See "My Country Right or Left," 55.

  89. South and east of the Thames, often regarded as if it was an East End community, this area is well known in Cockney tradition.

  90. Holborn is in the City of London; Marylebone Railway Station, a London terminus, was only two hundred to three hundred yards from where Orwell was living in Chagford Street.

  91. Madame Tussaud's Waxworks Exhibition was in Marylebone Road, a couple of hundred yards from where Orwell lived, in the opposite direction from Marylebone station.

  92. Woolwich, some 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.

  93. In Piccadilly Circus. The Windmill Theatre, as it proudly boasted, also "never closed"; it was a little to the northeast of Piccadilly Circus.

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

  95. Stephen Spender's flat, and the Horizon office, in Lansdowne Terrace, WCi. Orwell originally typed "S.S's place" but the first S was crossed out.

  96. 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."

  97. When the Germans first bombed London, there appeared to be no anti-aircraft defense. Sometimes a single plane could 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-ai
rcraft 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. See also 98, 12.9.40.

  98. Air Raid Precautions.

  99. A department store.

  100. In September 1940 a British expedition, cooperating 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.

  101. Unidentified.

  102. Unidentified.

  103. Unidentified.

  104. J. B. Priestley (1894-1984) was 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 determination and unity against Hitler, so as to make the country more democratic and egalitarian.

  105. David R. Margesson (1890--1965 ; Viscount, 1942), Conservative MP for Rugby, 1924-1942; Government Chief Whip, 1931-1940, 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.

  106. Probably Tosco Fyvel, with whom Orwell was then working; see 302, n. 63.

  107. Editor and journal not identified.

  108. Hitler's New Order for Europe--Nazism.

  109. It is possible that Orwell's animosity toward Sir Samuel Hoare (see last sentence of the paragraph and n. 42, above) led him to retail H.P.'s assertion.

  110. Unidentified.

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

  112. Mrs. Wallis Simpson, by this time married to the Duke of Windsor; see 302, n. 62.

  113. For Pierre Laval, see 300, n. 42.

  114. Coventry was attacked during the night of November 14, 1940.

  115. See 300, n. 40, above.

  116. See 301, n. 52, above.

  England Your England

  1. Searchlight Books, of which The Lion and the Unicorn was the first, were planned by Fredric Warburg, Tosco Fyvel, and Orwell during the summer of 1940. Orwell was persuaded, rather against his will, to write the first book--in effect, a sixty-four-page pamphlet. Having agreed, he wrote at speed, delivering the manuscript in November 1940. The Lion and the Unicorn was published by Secker & Warburg on February 19, 1941.