Eric Blair
Thought I’d take the opportunity to commemorate this day as I’ve been reading Homage To Catalonia again. George Orwell would have been 106 today and his account of his experience in the Spanish Civil War is one of the best and most honest accounts you’ll find on the subject. There are obviously many different books on the subject now analyzing what happened but it’s amazing how lucid Orwell’s book was. Unlike many others caught up in the ideologies of the war at the time, he saw that both Franco’s fascists, the Communists and Western powers eventually conspired to crush any kind of popular revolt.
He would surely have been delighted by the Spanish Government’s recent decision to award citizenship to those remaining few that like Orwell, fought in the International Brigades.
I completely agree with you that Orwell’s “account of his experience in the Spanish Civil War is one of the best and most honest accounts you’ll find on the subject.”
I think Orwell was a genuinely great writer, and only partly because of his intellectual honesty. Sadly though, his work is still misunderstood. I reply to one of these mistaken interpretations from a recent New York Review of Books article in this blog:
http://www.bretthetherington.net/Modules/Blog/Pages/BlogEntry.aspx?BlogEntryId=351
Forgive the correction but Eric Blair, who became George Orwell, was born in June 1903. That means that he is now 106, not as advertised, 107!
Brett, it should probably be added that in addition to all that he was also very brave. Reading through the conditions he went through in the civil war, it’s amazing he didn’t pack his bags and go home but it just shows how much fight people had in those days when it came to something they believed in. And to survive being shot through the throat as he did was miraculous.
Dione, thanks for spotting that. Maths was never my thing
Every complete set of chromosomes contains the full code; so there are, as a rule, two copies of the latter in the fertilized egg cell, which forms the earliest stage of the future individual. ,
Erm, thanks Gangster48. I think you might have commented on the wrong blog post though
My other favorite, when asked what parentlng style I ascribe to, is benign neglect. ,