George Orwell: A Life in Letters

by Peter Davison

  Norah Myles née Symes (1906–94) and Orwell’s wife Eileen became friends when they read English at St Hugh’s College, Oxford. Her father and husband were physicians in Bristol. Eileen gave no addressee to the letters she wrote and signed them simply as ‘E’ or by a pet-name, ‘Pig’. Norah only met Orwell once or twice and found him ‘rather intimidating’. Eileen thought of her and her husband, Quartus, as carers for Richard Blair should she die under anaesthetic (as she did) but slightly confusingly said, ‘you have never seen either of them’.

  C.K. Ogden (1889–1957), psychologist and teacher. In the 1920s he developed Basic English, in part as a result of discussions with the critic, I.A. Richards. BASIC stands for British American Scientific International Commercial. It comprises 850 words: 400 nouns, 200 picturable objects, 100 general qualities, 50 opposites, and 100 operators such as adverbs and particles. Winston Churchill formed a Cabinet Committee on Basic English in 1943 and in June 1946 Ogden assigned his copyright to the Crown for £23,000. A Basic English Foundation was established by the Ministry of Education in 1947. Reading in Basic proved fairly easy but writing clearly much more difficult.

  Gwen O’Shaughnessy, a doctor and Eileen’s sister-in-law. She lived at 24 Croom’s Hill, Greenwich, SE 10. Her son, Laurence, went to Canada by ship in June 1940 in an evacuation scheme to save children from bombing. The scheme ended after the most successful German submarine, the U-48, sank City of Benares on 17 September 1940 on its way to Canada. Of about 300 adults on board, 175 were drowned; 87 of the 100 children were drowned.

  Dr Laurence (Eric) O’Shaughnessy (1900–40), Eileen’s much-loved brother. He was proving an outstanding chest and heart surgeon, being appointed 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. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps at the outbreak of war and served at a casualty clearing station in Flanders where he was killed. Her brother’s death greatly affected Eileen (see Fyvel, pp. 105–6 and 136).

  Marie O’Shaughnessy,Eileen’s mother.

  Nancy Parratt (1919– ) joined the BBC on 13 June 1941 and worked for Orwell. She can be seen standing next to Orwell in a photograph of those participating in a ‘Voice’ programme – including T.S. Eliot and Mulk Raj Anand (Crick, plate 22). She left on 15 March 1943 to join the WRNS. She served in the USA, married there and was demobilised in May 1946.

  Dorothy Plowman (1887–1967), wife of Max Plowman. When Orwell was advised to winter in a warm climate, L.H. Myers (1881–1944), the novelist, wished to finance this anonymously and gave Mrs Plowman £300 to enable him to do so. She never told Orwell the source of the money, although he realised that she was acting as an intermediary.

  Max Plowman (1883–1941) worked on The Adelphi from 1929 until his death. He was Warden of the Adelphi Centre, 1938–41, an ardent supporter of the Peace Pledge Union from its foundation in 1934 and its General Secretary 1937–38. His publications include Introduction to the Study of Blake (1927), A Subaltern on the Somme (as Mark VII, 1928) a product of his experiences in the front line, and The Faith Called Pacifism (1936). He and his wife, Dorothy, remained lifelong friends of Orwell.

  Anne Popham studied the history of art and joined the Arts Council. She married Virginia Woolf’s nephew, Quentin Bell in 1952, and, as Anne Olivier Bell, edited Virginia Woolf’s Diaries 1915–41 with Andrew McNeillie (1977–85). In 1946 she had a flat on the floor below Orwell’s at 27b Canonbury Square.

  Anthony Powell, CH (1905–2000), novelist and editor, famous for the novel series, A Dance to the Music of Time (1951–75). He served from 1939 –45 in the Welch Regiment and the Intelligence Corps.

  Lady Violet Powell (1912–2002), when Lady Violet Pakenham she married Anthony Powell.

  Philip Rahv (1908–1973; born Ivan Greenberg), prominent Marxist literary critic and member of the John Reed Club. With William Phillips he founded Partisan Review and earlier was a contributor to New Masses.

  R.N. Raimbault (1882–1962), a distinguished wood engraver, painter, writer and translator. He taught French Literature, Greek and Latin at the Lycée du Mans. He was a particularly distinguished translator of American literature, especially of William Faulkner. He was the first translator of Orwell, who greatly admired his work.

  Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968), poet, critic, educator and interpreter of modern art. He served in the First World War being awarded the DSO and MC. He was particularly influential in the thirties and forties. His major works include Form in Modern Poetry (1932), Art Now (1933), Art and Society (1936), and Poetry and Anarchism (1938) – reprinted as Anarchy and Order (1954). His Education through Art, 1943, had an important post-war influence. He was the most influential British intellectual to support anarchism before World War II and was closely associated with anarchism until he was knighted.

  Sir Richard Rees (1900–70), editor, painter and critic. He was an attaché at the British Embassy in Berlin, 1922–23, a lecturer for the Workers’ Educational Association, 1925–27, and editor of The Adelphi, 1930–37. He introduced a more political and less-consciously literary tone to the journal. He gave much encouragement to Orwell from this period until his death. Ravelston of Keep the Aspidistra Flying owes something to his generous nature. He partnered Orwell on Jura and showed him great kindness throughout his life. He became Orwell’s literary executor jointly with Sonia Orwell and wrote George Orwell: A Fugitive from the Camp of Victory (1961).

  Vernon Richards (born Vero Recchione, 1915–2001), edited Spain and the World and its successor, Revolt!, 1936–39, which presented the Spanish Civil War from an anti-Stalinist stance. He was then one of the editors of Freedom through Anarchism, 1939–49. Born in Soho, London, he was a civil engineer, journalist, and anarchist. Orwell met him through the International Anti-Fascist Solidarity Committee to which Emma Goldman had introduced Orwell in 1938. He took many photographs of Orwell and his son: see George Orwell at Home (1998).

  Sir Steven Runciman (1903–2000) was a King’s Scholar at Eton in the same Election as Orwell. He became a distinguished historian and published A History of the Crusades, 3 volumes (1951–4), The Sicilian Vespers (1958), and The Fall of Constantinople (1965). To celebrate his 97th birthday he managed a visit to Mount Athos to observe the consecration of a monastery which he had helped pay to be restored.

  L.F. Rushbrook Williams, CBE (1890–1978), BBC Eastern Service Director, one-time Fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford; Professor of Modern History, Allahabad University, 1914–19, and Director of the Central Bureau of Information, India, 1920–26. Director of the BBC Indian Service, 1941 to November 1944 then joined The Times to 1955. His enlightened attitude to India is well expressed in India, an Oxford Pamphlet on World Affairs, 1940. In papers prepared for Sir Stafford Cripps comments on him include ‘has spent his life in the service of Indian Princes . . . Sails with the wind’.

  Balraj Sahni (1913–1973), was educated at Harvard and worked with Gandhi in 1938. He was an Indian Programme Assistant when Orwell joined the BBC. His wife, Damyanti, who died in 1947, was working at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. Orwell brought them together with Norman Marshall for the programme series, ‘Let’s Act it Ourselves’. On their return to India they worked for the Indian People’s Theatre Association. He then became an outstanding film actor. Damyanti starred in two films in 1946 and 1947. Did his work with Gandhi influence Orwell’s writing on Gandhi?

  Brenda Salkeld (1903–99), a clergyman’s daughter, and gym mistress at St Felix Girls’ School, Southwold. She met Orwell at Southwold and, although they did not agree on many issues – literary and personal – she remained a loyal friend to the end. She visited Orwell at Canonbury Square to see young Richard, on Jura, and at Cranham. Orwell sent her a dedicated copy of Down and Out in Paris and London. This has sixteen valuable annotations (see X, pp. 299–300). For her reminiscences of Orwell see Orwell Remembered, pp. 67–8, and Remembering Orwell, pp. 39–41.


  John Sceats (1912– ), an insurance agent who wrote articles for the socialist monthly, Controversy. Orwell admired these and asked Sceats to visit him at Preston Hall Sanatorium shortly after the publication of Homage to Catalonia.

  Roger Senhouse (c.1900–65) joined Martin Secker Ltd in 1936 and remained a director until he retired in 1962. His last year at Eton overlapped with Orwell. He processed Orwell’s work at Secker. Warburg in All Authors are Equal describes him as ‘larger than life . . . His rages . . . were uninhibitedly magnificent . . . Physically brave as a lion, he was something of a moral coward. He had a real appreciation of literature, coupled with a fabulous memory. . . . one of the best copy-editors and proof readers I have ever known’ (pp. 2–3).

  Sir Osbert Sitwell (1892–1969), poet, essayist, novelist and a particularly engaging author of autobiography. He was brother to Edith and Sachaverell Sitwell and a fervent fighter against philistinism. He was educated at Eton and served in the Grenadier Guards from 1912 to 1919. In his review of Great Morning (XIX, 3416, 395–8) Orwell described Sitwell’s first three autobiographies as among ‘the best of our time’. The fourth, Laughter in the Next Room, as ‘not so good’(see 1.6.49).

  Sir Sacheverell Sitwell (1897–1988), poet and critic; younger brother of Edith and Osbert Sitwell; educated at Eton. He served in the Grenadier Guards in World War I. Orwell reviewed his book, Poltergeists in September 1940 (XII, pp. 246–8).

  Hugh (Humphrey) Slater (1905–58), painter and author. He was at one time a Communist and involved in anti-Nazi politics in Berlin in the early thirties. He fought for the Republicans in Spain, 1936 –38, becoming Chief of Operations for the International Brigade. He put this experience to practical use (with Tom Wintringham) at the unofficial Osterley Park Training School which they ran to instruct members of the Home Guard in guerrilla tactics and street fighting. Orwell’s lecture notes on street fighting, field fortifications, and smoke mortars survive (XII, pp. 328–40).

  Sir Stephen Spender (1909–95), prolific poet, novelist, critic and translator. He edited Horizon with Cyril Connolly, 1940 –41. He was co-editor of Encounter, 1953–65, remaining on the editorial board until 1967, when it was discovered that it was partially financed by the US Central Intelligence Agency. Orwell originally included him amongst the parlour Bolsheviks and ‘fashionable successful persons’ whom he castigated from time to time. After his letter of 15 April 1938 they became friends.

  Gleb Struve (1898–1985), born St Petersburg, very prolific author. Fought in the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army in 1918 and then fled to Finland and England. Studied at Balliol College and later taught at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London University, 1932–47. He then became Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature, University of California, Berkeley, until 1965. He was the author of 25 Years of Soviet Russian Literature, 1918–43 (1944) and Soviet Literature 1917–50 (1951).

  Julian Symons (1912–94), editor of Twentieth Century Verse, 1937–39, and Anthology of War Poetry (1942); author of critical books and biographies among them Charles Dickens (1951), Thomas Carlyle (1952), and Horatio Bottomley (1955). He is perhaps best remembered today for his detective stories for which he won several awards. His Bloody Murder: from the Detective Story to the Crime Novel (1972) won the Edgar Allan Poe Award. He took over from Orwell as guest critic of the Manchester Evening News, 28 November 1946 (and though inexperienced, was paid £9 per contribution compared to Orwell’s £8 8s). When Orwell died he wrote a personal memoir for Tribune, 27 January 1950.

  Ihor Szewczenko (1922– ; now as Ševcˇenko), very distinguished scholar of Byzantine and Slavic Studies. When he and Orwell corresponded he commuted between Munich, where members of his family were living as Soviet-Ukrainian refugees, and Quakenbrück in the British Zone of Germany, where he worked on a daily newspaper for the Second Polish, the Maczek, Division (he was born in Poland). He emigrated to the United States and became Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History and Literature at Harvard University. His translation of Animal Farm stands out strangely from his many Byzantine and Slavic studies. He still has one link with Orwell: his hobby is trout fishing.

  Geoffrey Trease (1909–98), prolific author, most of whose 113 books were written for children. His study, Tales Out of School (1949) was an innovative survey of children’s literature. His stories, very different in style from those of G.A. Henty in the nineteenth century and Percy F. Westerman in the early twentieth, eschewed jingoism and appealed equally to girls and boys. In 1935 he and his wife, Marian, travelled for five months in Soviet Russia to benefit from his royalties frozen there. He was a member of the Labour Party and wrote ‘I myself never seriously considered joining the Communist Party . . . I noticed early what happened to individuals who left the Party on a sincere difference of opinion’. During the war he served in the Army Education Corps.

  Richard Alexander Usborne (1910–2006) was the author of a groundbreaking study, Clubland Heroes: a nostalgic study of some recurrent characters in romantic fiction (1953), which discussed such fictional characters as Bulldog Drummond and Richard Hannay. He also wrote much on, and adapted for radio, the stories of P.G. Wodehouse (e.g. A Wodehouse Companion, 1981). Like Orwell he was born in India and his father was also a member of the Indian Civil Service. The Strand (which he edited) ran from January 1891 to March 1950 when it was incorporated in Men Only.

  Fredric Warburg (1898–1980), Orwell’s second publisher. He began his career with George Routledge & Sons in 1922 when he came down from Oxford, ‘fit for practically nothing or, perhaps more accurately, for nothing practical’. He joined Martin Secker in 1936 and, as Harvill Secker, the house still flourishes. When Gollancz turned down Homage to Catalonia, he took it and then, when several publishers refused to publish Animal Farm he took that – and became Orwell’s publisher. He and his wife were very supportive of Orwell in his final illness. See Orwell Remembered, pp. 193–9. Warburg fought at Passchendaele in 1917. Though a commissioned officer, he was happy to serve in Orwell’s platoon in the Home Guard as a corporal in World War II. They are illustrated together in The Lost Orwell, plate 18.

  Francis and Myfanwy Westrope, Francis had been a conscientious objector in World War I; Myfanwy was an active suffragette and joined the ILP in 1905. Orwell’s employers at Booklovers’ Corner, Hampstead from the end of 1934 to January 1936. Gollancz’s lawyer was anxious lest the bookshop owner in Keep the Aspidistra Flying might lead to a libel or defamation action from the Westropes. Orwell reassured him he was very different in character and no action resulted. Orwell and Eileen ordered books from them when they were in Morocco.

  Tom Wintringham (1898–1949), served in the Royal Flying Corps in World War I, and edited Left Review, 1934–36. He went to Spain as a war correspondent in 1936 and commanded the British Battalion of the International Brigade near Madrid in 1937. He was a founder member of the British Communist Party but left after his service in Spain. He wrote on weapons, tactics, and the new methods of warfare and was a founder, with Hugh Slater, of the Osterley Park Training Centre for the Home Guard.

  George Woodcock (1912–95), author, anarchist, editor of Now, 1940–47, and later Professor of English, University of British Columbia. After a controversy with Orwell in 1942 (XIII, pp. 393–400), they corresponded and became close friends. They worked closely together on The Freedom Defence Committee. His books include The Crystal Spirit: A Study of George Orwell, 1967, and Orwell’s Message: 1984 and the Present (1984).

  Index

  This is an index chiefly of names. It is a selective index. Thus, ‘money’ is not indexed; if it were it, or a related word, would appear in almost one page in three. The brief biographical notes are indexed first, in bold, that page number being given immediately after the name; their contents are not indexed. Place names within addresses are not indexed. Because the great majority of letters were written by Orwell, they are not indexed under his name but are indexed under the recipient’s name with the page number(s) after the let
ter ‘L’ and a colon, e.g.: ‘L: 66’. Letters sent by Eileen and other correspondents are indicated by italic ‘L’ and a colon after the sender’s name followed by the recipient’s name and page number(s); a semicolon follows the last page reference to a letter after which pages with significant references are indexed in roman; significant footnotes are indexed in italic. The Chronology and Reading List are not indexed. Mac, Mc, and M’ are indexed as ‘Mac’, the order thereafter being by the ensuing letter; St is indexed as ‘Saint’. Titles are not given in the index unless there is no first name. Orwell’s misspellings of names are ignored in the index.

  Thus: Blair, Eileen, 509; L: 74; L: to Jack Common, 103; 221, 261 etc.

  ‘Abide with me’, 409

  Abingdon, 389, 434

  Abyssinia, 53

  Acasta, HMS, 71

  Ackerley, J. R., 110

  Acland, Richard, 136, 205

  Adam, 52

  Adam, Eugène, 67, 111

  Adam, Karl, 18

  Adam and Eve, 237

  Adelphi, The, 23, 27, 44, 53, 57, 58, 64, 83, 149, 192, 200, 201, 202, 236, 401, 402, 408

  Adelphi Forum, 57, 58

  Adelphi Summer School, 98

  Affairs of the Heart, 442

  Africa, 115, 152, 158, 166, 186, 212, 215, 216, 267, 310, 369, 375, 393, 417, 418, 422, 470; and see Morocco

  Agate, James, 169

  A[ir] R[aid] [Precautions], 126, 127

  air-raid shelters, 122, 126, 188