303. Orwell: Fighting Fascism In The Spanish Civil War (Part 2)

Summary

EMPIRE, EPISODE 303 — "Orwell: Fighting Fascism In The Spanish Civil War" (PART 2)
Hosted by William Dalrymple & Anita Anand
Release Date: October 30, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode continues the Empire podcast’s deep dive into George Orwell’s life, focusing on his transformative experiences during the Spanish Civil War. William Dalrymple and Anita Anand trace Orwell’s journey from passionate anti-fascist to his growing disillusionment with the left due to Stalinist totalitarianism and internecine conflict. The discussion weaves together Orwell’s personal life, the broader context of the Spanish Civil War, and the ideological lessons that influenced his later works.

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Major Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Orwell’s Life Prior to Spain

• Following a recap of Orwell’s early life (born Eric Blair in India, hating Eton, serving as an imperial policeman in Burma), Anita introduces Eileen O’Shaughnessy, Orwell’s wife and a critical yet often overlooked force in his writing career.

  “Eileen is very clever … She is at various times a teacher, a secretary, a journalist. And Orwell himself remarks that she was the nicest person he had ever met.” — Anita Anand (01:20)

• Orwell’s financial struggles and Eileen’s vital, unacknowledged support set the context for his pivotal travels in northern England, leading to The Road to Wigan Pier.

  • The couple lived in poverty:

    “No running water, no indoor lab, no electricity, as you say. But Eileen really sort of, you know, is the strength behind this.” — Anita Anand (02:54)

2. From Wigan Pier to Passion for Spain

• William describes how The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) captures Orwell’s “horror at the miner’s living and working conditions and produced what he describes as a passionate argument in favor of socialism,” but also a critique of the left’s fragmentation:

  “He says that socialism draws into itself by magnetic force every juice drinker, nudist, sandalware, sex maniac, Quaker nature cure, quack, pacifist and feminist in Eng.” — William Dalrymple (04:57)

• Anita connects this to Orwell’s prescience and how Spain became a magnet for idealists, referencing Camus:

  “In Spain … men learned that one can be right and yet be beaten. That force can vanquish spirit. And there are times when courage is not its own recompense.” — Albert Camus, quoted by Anita Anand (06:13)

3. Background on the Spanish Civil War

(Timestamps: 07:15 – 16:54)

• William and Anita discuss Spain’s poverty, its “exotic” reputation, and deep social divisions — monarchy vs. republic, Catholics vs. atheists, left vs. right.
• The ascent of General Franco:

  “He is shorter than most other boys … looks very much like, well, I don’t know, a bookkeeper of some sort. Were it not for the uniform and the medals, utterly unnoticeable in a crowd.” — Anita Anand (09:21)

• The Republican vs. Nationalist divide, with international support:
  • Nazis & Mussolini back Franco; the Soviets and international brigades back the Republic.
  • The first large-scale modern aerial bombing, exemplified by Guernica—described alongside its Picasso painting and modern echoes (e.g. “Gaznica” referring to Gaza).

4. The Global Ideological Battleground

• Discussing the Spanish Civil War as a precursor to WWII:

  “The Spanish Civil War was the first battle of World War II. After all, where else in the world at this point did you have Americans in uniform who were being bombed by Nazi planes four years before the US entered World War II?” — George Orwell, cited by Anita Anand (16:33)

• Intellectuals and writers flock to Spain, including Hemingway, Laurie Lee, and Jessica (Decca) Mitford.

5. Orwell’s Arrival in Spain & Disillusionment

(Timestamps: 21:00 – 34:00)

• On arrival, Orwell is swept up by the revolutionary fervor in Barcelona and joins the anti-Stalinist POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification) due to being rejected as politically unreliable by the Communist Party.

  “He feels rejected. He feels. This is really strange. And why is, you know, somebody who’s so willing to fight being given a purity test that he’s failing…?” — Anita Anand (22:17)

• Initially entranced by “an era of equality and freedom” in revolutionary Barcelona, Orwell witnesses firsthand the factionalism and inefficiency on the Republican side.

  “Firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy—listing the enemy is a bad last in the winter on the Zaragoza front.” — Orwell, quoted by William Dalrymple on front-line priorities (25:44-26:02)

• The left begins to fracture, with the Soviet-backed communists persecuting Trotskyites and other dissenters. Eileen, ever the political observer, detects how grave the internal danger has become before Orwell fully grasps it.

6. Experiencing Repression and Propaganda

• Stalinist purges target POUM:

  “This is Orwell’s first direct encounter with the insidious nature of totalitarian communism … the left has its own version of totalitarianism, which is just as bad, if not worse.” — William Dalrymple (28:19)

• Orwell and Eileen are directly threatened; Eileen’s quick thinking and practical courage enables their eventual escape.
• Orwell is wounded by a fascist sniper, which ironically saves him from being swept up in the purges (30:43).

  “Had Orwell not been wounded, it’s highly probable that he would have been arrested alongside his comrades.” — William Dalrymple (31:05)

• The manipulation of truth leaves a deep mark:

  “Great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men have been killed.” — Orwell, quoted by William Dalrymple (31:40)

7. Return to England & Homage to Catalonia

• With Eileen’s guidance, they escape Spain disguised as tourists (33:01) and cross into France (33:38).
• Orwell attempts to reveal the truth about the left’s infighting and Stalinist repression—but faces rejection and censorship in England:

  “People do not want to know. People don’t want to publish it, they don’t want to read it. If they talk about it, they’re going to be rude about it.” — Anita Anand (34:11)

• Homage to Catalonia is published but largely ignored by both left and right.
• The crucial lesson for Orwell:

  “It isn’t, as he said, left against right, it’s totalitarians against libertarians.” — William Dalrymple (35:27)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|---------|-------| | 01:20 | Anita Anand | “Eileen is ... the type of woman he wished to marry. And they have this whirlwind marriage.” | | 04:57 | William Dalrymple | “Socialism draws into itself by magnetic force every juice drinker, nudist, sandalware, sex maniac, Quaker, nature cure quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.” | | 06:13 | Anita Anand quoting Camus | “It was in Spain that men learned that one can be right and yet be beaten. That force can vanquish spirit. And there are times when courage is not its own recompense.” | | 16:33 | Orwell via Anita Anand | “The Spanish Civil War was the first battle of World War II … where else … did you have Americans in uniform who were being bombed by Nazi planes four years before the US entered World War II?” | | 22:17 | Anita Anand | “He feels rejected ... being given a purity test that he’s failing, and a purity test that’s basically set by the Soviets, not by London or people who know him.” | | 28:19 | William Dalrymple | “This is Orwell’s first direct encounter with the insidious nature of totalitarian communism ... totalitarianism on the left is just as bad, if not worse.” | | 31:40 | William Dalrymple reading Orwell | “Great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men have been killed.” | | 34:11 | Anita Anand | “People do not want to know. People don’t want to publish it, they don’t want to read it. If they talk about it, they’re going to be rude about it.” | | 35:27 | William Dalrymple | “It isn’t, as he said, left against right, it’s totalitarians against libertarians.” | | 38:42 | Anita Anand reading Hitchens | “While he was soldiering in Catalonia, he saw through the biggest, most seductive lie of them all, the false promise of a radiant future offered by the intellectual underlings of Stalinism.” |

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Key Takeaways & Episode Flow

• Orwell and Eileen: Eileen’s influence is repeatedly emphasized, with Anna Funder’s forthcoming insights teased for the next episode.
• Disillusionment on the Left: Orwell’s journey reveals the complexities and dangers of ideological purity, internal strife, and repression—even among supposed allies.
• Lasting Impact: Orwell’s direct experiences in the Spanish Civil War would forever color his writing and thinking, influencing Homage to Catalonia, Animal Farm, and 1984.
• Larger Historical Threads: The episode deftly situates Orwell’s personal fate within the epochal struggles between fascism, communism, and the early currents leading to WWII.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:20 – Introduction of Eileen O’Shaughnessy
• 04:10 – The Road to Wigan Pier and Orwell’s socialism
• 07:15 – Spanish Civil War background, rise of Franco
• 13:35 – Guernica, Picasso, and the terror of modern war
• 16:33 – International volunteers, Orwell’s framing of the Civil War as WWII precursor
• 21:00 – Orwell’s arrival in Spain, decision to fight, joining POUM
• 25:44 – Orwell’s trench life reflections and growing disillusionment
• 28:19 – Stalinist purges within the Republican camp
• 30:43 – Orwell wounded, Eileen’s role in their escape
• 34:11 – Reception and impact of Homage to Catalonia, Orwell’s isolation
• 35:27 – Orwell’s new ideological clarity: totalitarianism vs. liberty

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Tone & Style

The conversation is rich, lively, and unsparing, mixing deep historical analysis with witty asides ("No Pasaran … it’s very Gandalf the Grey," – Anita Anand, 24:49). The hosts balance popular and academic references, humanizing Orwell and his circle while situating them in the maelstrom of 1930s Europe.

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Next Episode Preview

The next installment will examine how Orwell’s Spanish Civil War experience led to his greatest works: Animal Farm and 1984, and how his critique of totalitarianism set him at odds with much of the left.

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For those seeking a gripping, textured understanding of how political idealism, betrayal, and historical tumult shaped Orwell—and the modern world—this episode is essential listening.

Transcript

[William Dalrymple]

If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat, community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire [e-mail].

[Anita Anand]

Hello and welcome to Empire with me.

[William Dalrymple]

Anit Arnand, and me, William Dalrymple.

[Anita Anand]

And this is the second episode in our miniseries on George Orwell. If you missed the first, let me tell you what you missed. You missed a lot. Where were you? First of all, wasn't born George Orwell was born. Eric Blair, wasn't born in Great Britain, was born in Bihar, moved to the UK as a toddler, went to Eton, hated Eton, went to runaway to Burma to join the Imperial police Force, became a police officer. He hated being a police officer, came back to Great Britain and this is the bit that we're going to be looking at. So he's sort of come back to Great Britain, but he's not going to tarry for that long because the next chapter of his life is going to revolve around the Spanish Civil War. And it will take you on a journey from Orwell's hatred of fascism and hatred of imperialism to a gradual disillusionment with what he thought might be the answer to Once Upon a Time, which was communism. And then he ends up sort of hating Stalinist totalitarianism. So that's what we're going to be talking about today, because what we did leave you with is he'd come back and he'd published Burmese Days, and it's after publishing Burmese Days that his life changes forever. And it changes because of a woman, and a really extraordinary woman at that, a woman called Eileen o'. Shaughnessy. Just in a nutshell. Who is Eileen? Eileen is very clever, she's very beautiful, Irish extraction. So she has that pale skin, these sort of sea blue eyes, she's got dark hair. She's one of the first female graduates from Oxford. She counts Tolkien himself as one of her professors. She is at various times a teacher, a secretary, a journalist. And Orwell himself remarks that she was the nicest person he had ever met and the type of woman he. He wished to marry. And they have this whirlwind marriage. We're going to go into this in a lot more detail with Anna Funder, who's written this fabulous book about oil and women. But they are married. June 9, 1936 is the date. The whirlwind marriage is so romantic. But life doesn't start that way, does it, William?

[William Dalrymple]

No. And they're living in great poverty because he's making no money and she hasn't got much either. So they move to a remote cottage in Wallington, Hertfordshire, where there is. Is there no. Is there no water, no heating? I mean, it's very basic.

[Anita Anand]

I mean, rent is £2amonth, so you can imagine what you're gonna get for £2amonth. So, you know, no running water, no indoor lab, no electricity, as you say. But Eileen really sort of, you know, is the strength behind this. She starts working. You know, he thinks he's gonna live the good life kind of thing. And she says, well, we kind of need some money coming in. So it is a pretty dire financial situation that they start their married life with. Despite this dire situation, when it comes to money, Eileen is an unacknowledged force for good in his writing. Not only will she edit stuff, she will give him ideas for stuff. Some of the things that happen to her will be credited to George Orwell's own biography, and you'll find out about that in our Anna Funder episode. But Orwell does start bringing in a little bit of money because shortly before they get married, he is thinking about the rest of his life. And he gets this commission in January 1936 to document the deprived conditions of the unemployed and destitute in the north of England during the Great Depression. And particularly he's looking at miners, and particularly he is going to immerse himself in their lives. So he's going to live in places like Wigan, Barnsley and Sheffield.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah. And this is the trip that's famously published a year later as the Road to Wigan Pier. And this is another of Orwell's classic books, still very much in print, still very much taught at schools and university. And it's his horror at his discovery, at what he had never really been aware of in the bubble that he grew up with as a King Scholar at Eton, with the most privileged of privileged folk at the heart of the empire. And it documents his horror at the miner's living and working conditions and produced what he describes as a passionate argument in favor of socialism. And it also contains, which is really interesting for what comes, a critique of the socialist movement itself. Already he's critiquing the left almost as soon as joining it. And he's frustrated by its fragmentation and what he sees as its sort of basic ideological confusion, which he believes alienated decent people and rather like people on the right today, dismissing the left as woke with all that that implies, he says that socialism draws into itself by Magnetic force. Every juice drinker, nudist, sandalware, sex maniac, Quaker nature cure, quack, pacifist and feminist in Eng. I wonder which of those today juice drinker. I think even the right, even the most far right. I'm sure Nigel Farage has juice for breakfast, doesn't he? He wouldn't.

[Anita Anand]

The thing is it again, like Orwell does, I mean what he does is he's just again so prescient because that's how you're right. I mean, you know, often the left are dismissed as hemp wearing, tofu eating, surrender monkeys. You know, that kind of thing goes around. And so he was doing it so much earlier. He does this assignment wrote to Wigan Pier. As the result of that, he completes the final version of his manuscript in December 1936. But very soon after that he leaves for Spain. And Spain is an absolute magnet for the ideological and for those who want to change the world for the better. So Camus said something really beautiful. And it was after the Spanish Civil War was over. He says it's now nine years that men of my generation have had Spain within their hearts. Nine years that they've carried it within them like an evil wound. And this is the most sort of haunting phrase from the Nobel laureate. It was in Spain that men learned that one can be right and yet be beaten. That force can vanquish spirit. And there are times when courage is not its own recompense at the time. The magnet not for, you know, juice drinkers or sex maniacs, the magnet for the politically aware. And those who have sort of wide eyed stars in there, you know, think they can change things, is Spain and the Spanish Civil War. And we should give a little bit of context to this, you know, what was the Spanish Civil War all about?

[William Dalrymple]

So in the early 20th century, Spain is a country in turmoil. It's much poorer than most of Europe. It's considered enormously exotic. If you read the novels of the 1920s, think of Hemingway in Fiesta, the Sun Also Rises. It's almost like going to a third world country. For Hemingway, going south from Paris is to go into something far more exotic. Spain is somewhere which is barely developed and which is much more backward than France. And along with that comes stark inequalities between landowners and peasants, growing tensions between monarchy and the republican movement, the whole business of the Catholic Church and atheist socialists who disapprove of the rights and the political position of the Catholic Church, and the clashing of powerful left and right wing ideologies. In 1931, the monarchy's overthrown and the Second Spanish Republic is established, bringing sweeping reforms such as secular education, land distribution and the reduction. This is the crucial thing, the reduction of power for the Catholic Church. So in my family, than my wife's family, both of whom are very Catholic, these caused enormous divisions because the more conservative elements very much supported the Catholic Church and the monarchy. And with that, this General Franco, who we'll come to in a second. And it was considered for pious Catholics at the time to be a matter of faith that you would support the monarchy and Franco.

[Anita Anand]

And it's also against the backdrop of swirling tensions in the rest of Europe, sort of left and right going at each other. You mentioned Franco and we should say who Franco is. Born in December 1892, Francisco Franco Bajamonde came from a family of upper class naval officers. And he joins the infantry academy at the age of 14, which is much younger than most other boys would. And he is shorter than most other boys in his class.

[William Dalrymple]

He's a kind of Napoleonic figure.

[Anita Anand]

I know I'm shallow. He's not a looker at all. Looks very much like, well, I don't know, a bookkeeper of some sort. Were it not for the uniform and the medals, utterly unnoticeable in a crowd, I would say. And in 1912, Franco serves in Morocco when it was established as a Spanish protectorate. Whatever he lacked in looks and height, he made up for in ambition because he wanted to be a man who was going somewhere and the pathway to promotion was through action. So he joins this newly formed brigade, the regulars, and they're Moroccan troops at Spanish officers and they often find themselves on the front line. So he's not somebody who is going to be commanding from the back. And these years are formative for him. And his relationship with Moroccan troops is going to be really important and it's going to be one of the things that elevates him to power.

[William Dalrymple]

And this is this period in the interwar years where all these colonial armies are fighting with colonial troops. So the, the British army has vast numbers of Indian troops, the French have large numbers of Algerian troops and the Spanish have Moroccans.

[Anita Anand]

So he's only 24 when he becomes the youngest major in the Spanish army. So, you know, this tenacity and ambition does pay off for Franco. But as William was saying, you know, you have not just a Spain, but a whole Europe riven about the overthrow of the monarchy and the rise of the republic, because the republic is not on God's side. So in July 1936, Franco leads this group of right wing military officers. So he launches a coup against the Republican government. But the coup fails. It doesn't work. But what it does do, it succeeds in splitting Spain into two camps. You have the Republicans made up of the leftists, the socialists, the communists, the anarchists and the Liberal Democrats. You've got the nationalists then on the other side, which is made up of the conservatives, monarchists, fascists and much of the Catholic hierarchy. And they have got now this rallying point, and that rallying point is General Franco.

[William Dalrymple]

And of course there are outsiders interfering. So as Spain descends into full scale civil war with both sides receiving international support, it's of course Franco that is supported by Nazi Germany. And this is the period when Hitler is building up the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe and both are being given their first outing in the Spanish Civil War. It's the first time that you see cities reduced to complete rubble by aerial bombing campaigns. In the First World War, there'd been little sort of Sopworth camels dropping tiny bombs that were more like grenades, but now we're seeing these massive bombers for the first time unleashing their payloads. And the military support of Nazi Germany gives a massive boost to the fascists. And the Republicans are on the back foot. And this is the point when Orwell arrives.

[Anita Anand]

It isn't just the Nazis, it's also Fascist Italy. Let's not forget, you know, sort of the land of Mussolini was also backing the nationalists because they are singing from the same hymn sheet. But as far as international interference is concerned, the other side has it too, because you have the Soviet Union then getting involved. So, you know, this is before World War II, remember, the Soviet Union starts sending international brigades of leftist volunteers. This becomes almost a proxy world war. There are people who've described it in that way. I mean, I think Orwell himself describes it as, you know, World War II started well before the date of World War II and Spain was its arena. And you have these new military technologies that William was talking about about that are going to be the hallmark of the Second World War. And the fighting is so bitter and acrimonious that there are horrific atrocities on both sides, including mass executions, the strafing of civilian populations, and that infamous attack on a place called Guernica. And you will know that name, Guernica, because of that Pablo Picasso painting, that very famous 1936. I mean, describe it for us. You're very good at describing paintings, William. For anyone who doesn't know what Guernica.

[William Dalrymple]

Is, you couldn't have asked a more difficult painting to Describe. It's a scene of sort of Cubist chaos, if you like, with a sun beaming down. A sun that could also be a sort of an aerial explosion of a bomb, because it's sort of jagged outwards. There are sort of parts of bulls coming out of walls. There are horses screaming, people with their hands in the air as if from behind, bodies on the ground. And it's probably the single most famous. It is the single most famous painting by Picasso and of the Modernist Movement, 1937. But it's also very much a testament of the time. It's when people are becoming aware of the horrors of the new warfare that is being pioneered by the new technology of Nazi Germany.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, I mean, of its time, but also resonant for years later, because in 2003, there was a reproduction of Guernica in the United nations building, and it was covered up when the US Secretary of State announced the war in Iraq, because so powerful was its message that this kind of warfare is unacceptable, that they covered it up. And I think you talked. Didn't you talk to an artist, Willi, who? There is a Gaznica, which is a painting about the war in Gaza.

[William Dalrymple]

Yes, it's called Gaznica, and it sort of quotes Picasso. It's got the same suns, the same arrangement of splayed figures in the process of being massacred and shot up. But they are, in this case, Palestinians, wearing very clearly a Palestinian kaffier. It's moving the Picasso image into Gaza.

[Anita Anand]

There was an extraordinary exhibition some years ago at the Imperial War Museum of the Spanish Civil War. It was just called Dreams and Nightmares. And if you look at some of the photographs that they displayed, what is really striking is that you have squares full of people in civilian dress just lying dead on the ground, you know, obviously strafed from above. And they just look as though they've been frozen in a moment, going to work or going to the market or, you know, they don't look like they're fighters, but they are certainly the casualties of this hideous civil war. And what happens is, you know, the more this war progresses, the more it becomes a lightning rod for people who have ideology. You get African Americans who join the Republican International Brigade. And this is kind of really bonkers to think about, but around 90 African Americans volunteered in the International Brigade on the Republican side, that's the side on the left. The nationalists are on the right, and they are motivated against this fight against fascism and a belief in international solidarity against colonialism and racial discrimination. And so they fight. So this is A George Orwell quote. The Spanish Civil War was the first battle of World War II. After all, where else in the world at this point did you have Americans in uniform who were being bombed by Nazi planes four years before the US entered World War II? So, you know, you have this whole small arena of what is going to be a much larger scale of conflict.

[William Dalrymple]

And it becomes as famous and as well written as it is because so many writers head off there. Most famous, Ernest Hemingway, who's already written a novel in Spain, which I mentioned before, Fiesta, Sun Also Rises. And now this is For Whom the Bell Tolls, which some think to be his great masterpiece. I personally prefer Farewell to Arms, but it's a spectacular image of these Republican fighters trying to blow up a bridge in Spain at this time. And it's also the novel which did the earth move for you comes from. For those that know the Hemingway. The other person who goes there, of course, is Laurie Lee, who I met and chatted with before he died. When I once my first literary prize, Lori Lee gave it to me for City of Gins, and we chatted about his time in Spain. And so I actually got this from the horse's mouth. And for him it was this great liberation, not only fighting for the Republic, but also he'd come from very small town Cotswolds, sided with rosy territory, and suddenly catapulted into this world with Hemingway and with Orwell and all these other extraordinary characters.

[Anita Anand]

Can I just tell you, the other other person who went over to fight in this war was one of the youngest of the Mitford sisters, Decca Mitford.

[William Dalrymple]

Did she fight too?

[Anita Anand]

She has, you know, two sisters who are Nazi sympathisers. The oldest sister in the Mitford family is the famous writer Nancy Mitford. And Decca falls in love with a communist from the East End of London. You know, they fall madly, deeply in love and they both head off to fight in the Spanish Civil War. So this is an absolute melting pot of intellectuals, if you like interesting people. And that is where Orwell finds himself in the middle of. Join us after the break and we'll tell you what happens as soon as he arrives in December 1936.

[William Dalrymple]

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[William Dalrymple]

So Orwell doesn't go to Spain as a fighter. He thinks he's going there to report the Civil War as a journalist, which is what Hemingway, for example, was doing. But unlike Hemingway, on arrival in Barcelona, he's so profoundly moved by the revolutionary atmosphere that he immediately abandons his journalistic plans and decides to enlist as a soldier. And what happens to him then is how he and Eileen, who is also with him, after a break, she comes and joins him. What they find the hypocrisy and the growing totalitarianism of the left, dictated by the growing Stalinist influence from Russia, completely changes his attitudes. And so this is the crucial moment in which Orwell verges rightwards.

[Anita Anand]

It is certainly what's happening with Soviet Russia, but it's also the British left which starts getting on his nerves and big time because initially he wants to join this larger communist led international brigade. And he goes to the headquarters of the Communist Party of Great Britain and says, I'd really like to join the big communist led International brigade. It's international, I'll meet lots of people. It's the biggest one, can I join it? But Harry Pott says, actually, oh, well, you know what? You're politically unreliable. And he won't help him because he's not the right type of lefty. He feels rejected. He feels. This is really strange. And why is, you know, somebody who's so willing to fight being given a purity test that he's failing, and a purity test that's. That's basically set by the Soviets, not by London or people who know him. So, you know, he starts then going into the ranks.

[William Dalrymple]

Not set by Spain either.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, just set by Stalin. So by accident, because he's still sort of wanting to be part of this, he's funneled into the ranks of the Communist Party's greatest political enemy. In Spain, he starts getting involved with the Independent Labour Party of Spain. It's a small maverick socialist group, and it's allied with anti Stalinist lefties, the anti Stalinist Workers Party of Marxist Unification. They have a snappy title or the P O U M for short, poom. So he becomes a member of boom, and they're the ones who give him accreditation, because he can't even get accreditation from the British Labour Party because he's not the right kind of lefty. And he doesn't think the Stalinists would like him or he doesn't particularly want to join them immediately. So finally he finds this home. But the problem is, in Spain, it's the wrong kind of left and it's not the right kind of left. So, you know, he shows, I think, a degree of naivety that, you know, he's coming in to fight for a cause. He's this sort of, you know, soldier poet who's going to be on the right side. And he ends up in poom. Just they're the only ones that'll have him.

[William Dalrymple]

So he arrives in Barcelona at the close of 1936, and what he witnesses is a society transformed by revolutionary fervour, radical contrast to all the kind of rigid class structures that he's been railing about in Britain. And initially he's completely won over by it. He describes the atmosphere as the sudden emergence into an era of equality and freedom. And after the racial hierarchies of Burma and the class structure of England, he thinks he's arrived in a sort of classless Eden. And he observes a city where the working class is in control, apparently, with every wall scrawled with hammer and sickle and every shop clactamized. He sees it as the living embodiment of the ideals he'd been seeking to Understand, since his return to Burma. So his initial attitude is of enormous excitement and he's thrilled.

[Anita Anand]

But there are also these amazing characters who, you know, make the whole thing seem so romantic. So people like a woman called La Pasionara. Her real name was Isadora Dolores Ibaruri Gomez, and she is this amazing strong woman who gives these fiery speeches about the Spanish Civil War. Her favorite phrase becomes this republican battle cry, no Pasaran. No Pasaran is her cry, which means they shall not to pass. You know, it's very Gandalf the Grey. But she is the one who says, you know what we know that people are coming to us. They gave up everything, their homes, their country, their fortune, fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, sisters and children. They came and they told us, we are here. Your cause, Spain's cause is our cause. And that's the kind of rhetoric. But then he goes to the front, William, and this is the Aragon front. Tell us about the Aragon front.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah, and this is where things begin to go, go pear shape because as everyone finds in warfare, most of warfare is about the cold, boredom and surviving. And Orwell notes his hierarchy of needs as he's sitting in his trench. He says, firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy listing the enemy is a bad last in the winter on the Zaragoza front. The pum, whose name you enjoyed so much is a basically a Sotrotskyist party. It's one of several leftist positions. But of course, the Trotskyists are now Persona non grata in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is supplying most of the weapons for the republicans, so he has not chosen an easy position. And while he's driven by a desire to fight fascism or Will quickly observes the kind of massive inefficiency of his unit, concluding the Spaniards were competent at many things, but not at making war.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, I mean, it's a harsh judgment. I mean, part of the problem for them is that they're not getting help from anybody else. Not really. The British government has a policy of non intervention, officially neutral, but, you know, they actually effectively end up working against the Spanish Republic because Western democracies won't sell arms to the republican government. And when it's the legitimate republican government that's overthrown by Franco, they don't come to its aid, even though it exists than the actual government.

[William Dalrymple]

And because of the Second World War, I think we all forget how far right the British were at this period and how many Nazi and fascist sympathisers there were in the British upper classes at this period. That all gets kind of rewritten out of history when we end up at war with Nazi Germany. But there are many among the ruling class in Britain that think Franco's wonderful.

[Anita Anand]

Hello, Mitfords. I mean, you know, sort of families are split in half by this. Eileen arrives in Barcelona in February 1937, and she comes in an official capacity because she's the secretary to John McNair, the Independent Labour Party representative in Spain. So she immediately gets to work, she starts producing a newsletter. And while she's sort of working away, Orwell is bored out of his gourd because nothing much is happening apart from he's getting very, very cold and very, very bored and observing all these weird fractions and factions in the left and it's all really ticking him off. So he gets leave in April 1937. Eileen comes and visits him and notes that he's tanned and well, but afflicted by lice.

[William Dalrymple]

But I think it's Eileen actually in Barcelona headquarters that notices, before Orwell does, the divisions on the left and the fact that the left is about to eat itself. And there's a Stalinist orchestrated purge of his party, the party he's fighting to for. Boom. And it's denounced by its own allies as a fascist organization. It's not left enough. And this is something that Eileen gets onto very early on, and its members are rounded up and imprisoned. And this is Orwell's first direct encounter with the insidious nature of totalitarian communism. You know, he's come from the world of British imperialism, which he knows is a bad thing and is oppressing freedom. But this is the point that he realized it's just not the right and imperialism, which is oppressive, that the left has its own version of totalitarianism, which is just as bad, if not worse.

[Anita Anand]

Well, I mean, and that purge, taking people off, that fear of that is going to remain with him even when he goes back to England, because, you know, there will be times when there's a knock on the door and he won't answer because he thinks it is the communists who have come to get him because he was on the wrong bit of the left. Even when he's back in England Anyway, maybe the third 1937, police units attempt to seize the central anarchist controlled telephone exchange, and this is immediately met with resistance. There are five days of intense street fighting and there are people falling everywhere.

[William Dalrymple]

And just to clarify, this is left on left fighting. This has nothing to do with the fascists or with Franco. This is two different factions of the left killing each other.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah. And so, I mean, You've got casualties ranging between 500 and 1,000. And Orwell, who's on leave in the city, he spends three nights defending the POOM headquarters on the rooftop of a cinema with a rifle. And it is a nightmare unfolding right before his eyes. I mean, he always sort of finds himself in these places where he bears witness to some of the worst that humanity can do to other human beings. So what happens then, after? I mean, because POOM is defeated in the end. So what happens then, William, when you've got.

[William Dalrymple]

The faction for which Orwell has been fighting is now Persona non grata, but luckily, just at the right moment. And this actually potentially saves his life, ironically, he's shot by a sniper, but not killed.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, who'd have thought that he's on.

[William Dalrymple]

The Aragon front and he's shot in the throat by a fascist sniper because at this point he's fighting fascists. But, you know, the previous month he's been defending POOM against Stalinist. But it's the fascist sniper that saves his life because it's a near fatal injury. The bullet misses his main archery by a mere millimeter, and it necessitates his immediate departure from the front and returned to Barcelona for treatment and recovery. And while he's away, there's a purge of all his faction. His commander, Georges Cop, is arrested, tortured and jailed. His colleagues. Bob Smiley died while imprisoned on the French border and had or will not been wounded, it's highly probable that he would have been arrested alongside his comrades. And what he also observes, other than this kind of hideous tendency of the Left to eat itself up and demand ideological conformity, he also notices how much the Left is just making stuff up in its propaganda. He observes, and this is a quote from him, great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men have been killed. And this idea of the fabrication of history becomes one of his big passions now. And it would be, of course, a theme that he later explores both in 1984 and Animal Farm.

[Anita Anand]

And the reason actually he survives with a bullet wound to the throat is because of Eileen. So she looks after him, biding her time to try and get him out. Meanwhile, she too has been the target of this purge. And she spends this terrifying time. Her offices are raided, they go through, you know, throwing books and papers around, screaming and shouting, threatening anyone who's a Trotskyist with arrest or worse. And she has to stand through all of that frozen. And then, you know, finally they leave. But that is an absolutely intensely terrifying time for Hours it goes on for. But Eileen then comes away from that and she says, you know what, we got to get out of here. We cannot save here. We absolutely have to go. So Orwell tears up his militiaman's card, he destroys the photograph of his POOM unit and gets rid of any flags or paraphernalia that might, you know, identify him as being part of poom. And then they have to work their way out. But it is really Eileen who tells him, you've got to do this or we're not going anywhere.

[William Dalrymple]

This again is Anna Funder's research and we're going to go to Anna for the final episode where she makes the point that Eileen, who's this unacknowledged figure who doesn't appear at all in the homage to Catalonia, Orwell's book on the subject, or who barely appears and is only dismissed as my wife.

[Anita Anand]

My wife. The wife. Yeah, yeah.

[William Dalrymple]

Is the one who saves his life and has the. What's the word? I suppose the political perspicacity to realize how much danger they're in, which Orwell still hasn't quite sort of realized.

[Anita Anand]

Well, I mean, they get out, they do get out. They pose as tourists, casual tourists, and they get into France.

[William Dalrymple]

They escape from the Continental Hotel in Barcelona on the morning of June 23rd. And to escape detection by the police operating near the border, the entire group, including Eileen, disguise themselves as a casual tourist party to cross by train into France. And on arriving in France, Orwell immediately tries to share his truth, telegramming the New Statesman to offer a first hand article he finds, which is what he'll find after this in many other occasions, that the left does not want to hear his version of events, that, that he's being censored.

[Anita Anand]

They don't want to hear Stalin being drubbed. They don't want to hear about Stalin purges. They don't want to hear about the fact that, you know, people who are fighting on the same side are turning against each other and eating their own. When he returns to his cottage in Wallington, he starts writing again against the lies that are being perpetrated partly by the left and mostly by the right. And he finishes this manuscript which will become what William has already talked about, the homage to Catalonia. And he finishes it on New Year's Day 1938. And he does always say that the reason he had to write this, he didn't have any choice, even though he's, you know, recovering from this bullet wound is because lies have to be rectified. You cannot Leave Lies Standing. And the reception to the book is exactly what he thought it would be. People do not want to know. People don't want to publish it, they don't want to read it. If they talk about it, they're going to be rude about it. I mean, his long term publisher and you know, the relationship between a writer and a publisher is kind of one of those sacred things. But his publisher, Victor Gallands, who did publish the Road to Wigan Pier, says I'm not touching this, I'm not touching this. It's going to harm the cause of anti fascism. He's not the only one, is he though. William, I know everyone backs off.

[William Dalrymple]

The New Statesman, as we said, rejected Orwell's essay, citing the official Popular Front party line that no enemies on the left. And it's this refusal of his colleagues to disseminate the truth and the fact that they cover it all up that hardens Orwell's views. He now realizes that it isn't, as he said, left against right, it's totalitarians against libertarians. The importance of being able to speak clearly, to avoid censorship, to tell your truth clearly and not censor is the cause to which he will now hoist his flag for the rest of his life.

[Anita Anand]

Right. I mean, eventually somebody does publish Homage to Catalonia.

[William Dalrymple]

Secre and Wahlberg still going.

[Anita Anand]

Secre and Wahlberg, exactly. They publish him, but you know, it doesn't do great business. The left aren't interested. The right don't want to hear from a lefty writer. I mean, it just doesn't have a market, does it? Nobody wants to read this stuff. But despite that, it does set Orwell on a path because he says himself he has a new mission. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism. And this book really just becomes a manifesto for like minded people as well. A kind of socialism that they can believe in. Something that's anti authoritarian, that's decentralized, that is on brotherhood, camaraderie, the kind of things he thought he was walking in to fight for, and very much not Stalinism anyway. Tell us, William, how does the Spanish Civil War end? It ends without him. But what happens?

[William Dalrymple]

Partly as a result of the left eating itself, partly because the suppliers of the weapons, the Soviets, demand a hard lined Stalinist type communism and gobble up Trotskyites and anarchists and so on. The left is divided against itself and Franco's nationalists emerge victorious just before the Second World War and A key front that it was won on was, of course, through the Moroccan fighters who fought on Franco's nationalist side. Around 80,000 Moroccans, very much Franco's sort of core men, fought for Franco and were known for their fierce tactics. And these troops were recruited from the poorest, largely rural population under Spanish colonial rule, and they served as the shock troops. So very much, as we've discussed in previous episodes, how the Punjabis are the unsung heroes of so much of the British fighting in both first and second World wars, so the Moroccans are fighting in the Spanish War. But for Orwell, the important thing is that it again realigns him. And he is really the first major intellectual on the left to realize the dangers of communism. And what's so powerful is the fact that he is of the left. He's not a right winger saying that communism is evil because it's communism. He's saying it's evil because it's totalitarian, because it doesn't allow dissent.

[Anita Anand]

Can I read you a quote from Christopher Hitchens about Orwell?

[William Dalrymple]

Go for it.

[Anita Anand]

So Hitchens says Orwell was one of the first to volunteer to bear arms against fascism and Nazism in Spain. And while he was soldiering in Catalonia, he saw through the biggest, most seductive lie of them all, the false promise of a radiant future offered by the intellectual underlings of Stalinism. And that's Hitchens writing about it.

[William Dalrymple]

Hitchens makes a similar journey, doesn't he? He goes from the extreme left to the kind of soft right, goes further than Orwell will do. But Hitchens is an Orwell like character in many ways.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah. Anyway, look, in the next episode, we're going to be exploring Orwell's critique of totalitarian communism. That same thing that we've been talking about in Spain, the thing that gets him alienated by much of the left and the two seminal pieces of work that are produced as a result, animal farm and 1984. If you want to hear those episodes right now, you don't have to wait, you know, you don't have to wait. You just join Empire Club. EmpirePod UK.com is where we are. EmpirePodUK.com you get to chat about all things Orwell on our Discord. You get a weekly newsletter, you get book discounts. One pint a month is the price of that. All of that stuff. That's not bad, is it?

[William Dalrymple]

Or a really fancy cappuccino.

[Anita Anand]

Yep. Till the next time we meet, then it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan.

[William Dalrymple]

A goodbye from me, William Duration.