In Our Time - Animal Farm

Episode Date: September 29, 2016

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Animal Farm, which Eric Blair published under his pen name George Orwell in 1945. A biting critique of totalitarianism, particularly Stalinism, the essay sprung from Orwell's experiences fighting Fascists in Spain: he thought that all on the left were on the same side, until the dominant Communists violently suppressed the Anarchists and Trotskyists, and Orwell had to escape to France to avoid arrest. Setting his satire in an English farm, Orwell drew on the Russian Revolution of 1917, on Stalin's cult of personality and the purges. The leaders on Animal Farm are pigs, the secret police are attack dogs, the supporters who drown out debate with "four legs good, two legs bad" are sheep.At first, London publishers did not want to touch Orwell's work out of sympathy for the USSR, an ally of Britain in the Second World War, but the Cold War gave it a new audience and Animal Farm became a commercial as well as a critical success.Featuring: Steven Connor - Grace 2 Professor of English at the University of CambridgeMary Vincent - Professor of Modern European History at the University of SheffieldRobert Colls - Professor of Cultural History at De Montfort UniversityProducer: Simon TillotsonFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2016.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for news about In Our Time, and for recommendations about our archive, please follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programmes. Hello, George Orwell wrote Animal Farm at the height of the Second World War. He struggled to find a publisher. Stalin's Russia, our great ally at the time, was crucial in the battle against Hitler, and Orr's attack on Stalinism was thought far too insulting. Why, the publishers asked, was Stalin presented as a pig? and his supporters as pigs, could all well not have chosen a more sympathetic animal for such an important ally. The Cold War changed all that.

From soon after its eventual appearance in August 1945, until the fall of the Berlin Wall, Animal Farm was celebrated in the West as an allegory of all that was wrong with the communism of the Soviet Union. The CIA even funded a film version in the 1950s, an irony for a book that explores the dangers of propaganda. With me to discuss Animal Farm,

are Stephen Connor, the Grace 2 Professor of English at the University of Cambridge, Mary Vincent, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Sheffield, and Robert Coles, Professor of Cultural History at De Montford University. Steve Connor, we call him George Orwell, but his real name was Eric Blair. What was his early life like? Well, he was born into what he himself described as the lower, upper middle class, sort of declining gentility, certainly getting poorer and poorer. actually born in India, but came back to Britain at a very young age.

He attended a series of schools, rather minor private schools, that he hated, one particular in Eastbourne that was the great ambition of his parents was to get him into a major public school. And indeed, he did get a scholarship to Eaton in 1917. doesn't seem to have been terribly academic and certainly didn't go to university. He took the extraordinary step. They usually popped their people into university like peas out of a shell, didn't they? Why didn't he pop?

Straight into kings? Well, I'm not sure. He certainly, I mean, he certainly seemed to have learned a lot indeed and certainly seemed to have, you know, developed a lot of interesting kind of literary taste reading habits and so forth. But he found himself in the Indian police, actually in Burma.

and as a young man of 19, very extraordinary, with an enormous amount of responsibility, and stayed in Burma until 1927. Just a second. He's a literary young man. He's been at a school, he's encouraged to do esoteric things, least of all to do something like joining the police.

What made him join the police and in Burma? Well, I'm not quite sure what the motivation was. I think there was a certain sense that, you know, that was where he had been born, though it was a very, very long time ago. we'd only had a year of it. I mean, remember this is the man that for the rest of his life would be doing, going and doing very, very uncharacteristic things,

going and slumming it in places where, you know, you wouldn't expect him to be. So I think that there's part of that slightly perverse, French call it nostalgia de bour, you know, kind of longing for the mud that is there. I mean, I also think this is the end of empire. It wasn't an entirely unreasonable or uncharacteristic thing to do for a young man, a little bit unusual.

But it certainly was a way into the ruling class, but not for Orwell, because he didn't get on with it really at all. What did he do? What did he make of his timing, Berma? What was the most significant part of him? Well, I think the thing about Burma was that for the rest of his life, it was for him the very embodiment of power exercised, illegitimately, cruelly, and most importantly of all, stupidly.

It's the stupidity of power, of imperial power, that seems to impress him. He keeps on writing about it all the way through his life. Some of the best things he ever wrote, his essay is like a hanging, or shooting an elephant, where he describes the absurdity of having to shoot this magnificent creature simply in order not to seem ridiculous, not to lose face, and he was scared of being laughed at, And there's something, I think, brilliant about that apprehension

that these great apparatuses of power often depend upon silly things like that. Was he in a position of control out there? We think of certain parts of empire while a young man from public schools went out and governed somewhere the size of Scotland. Was he in that position? He was. He was promoted quite early on. He might have actually built himself a very, you know, substantial career. and it was, you know, he took the decision to become a writer.

It took him a very long time to establish himself when he did that. But I think increasingly there was just something about the physical nature of that experience that he just found more and more intolerable. Mary Vincent, have we any notion of a key incident that decided him against the Burmese police and why he came back to England? That, Steve might be a better place to answer that than me as to why he came back from the Burmese pleas. I don't think we know of any one precipitating instance.

I mean, you know, I think there seems to have been, I mean, he's certainly, you know. So there wasn't one instance, so he came back. How long had he been there? Well, he comes back when, I think another hugely important stage, in Norwell's development is when he goes to Spain. So he's come back from the Burmese police. He goes on these kind of expeditions through England in the 1930s to get in touch with the common man, I think essentially,

who is an extremely important reference point for Orwell. And then when he goes to Spain in 1937, which he does in a similar kind of way from joining the Burmese police because he goes to Spain to fight in the civil war, he goes to make a stand against fascism. He goes to reveal something which he believes, you know, he's also seen in his journeys around England. But he does it in an entirely, in a very characteristic way

in that he goes on his own. He makes, he has an unusual experience. He decides to go to Spain out of a value. He wants to go make stunts against fascism. But he gets there in really quite a peculiar way and he ends up having really quite a singular experience in Spain. He goes out as an individual and is sponsored by the IELP.

Exactly. But he comes back from Berman, decides he's going to be a writer and he pegs away at it, he writes columns, he writes this, that and the other, for many years, doing good work, but not spectacular,

not taken up, certainly, and then he goes, does he carry this, that's just the tail end of this empire, as he was at the tail end, is that carried around in those early works? Yes, I think so, very much so.

So he goes to, he's in Spain, is in the Civil War, and that's where we think, and you tell me, he turns against Stalin. He sees what Stalin is up to, which many British intellectuals, English intellectuals, well, Irish in some cases, George Mnuchy Wales, have closed their eyes to or just being too stupid to look for the reasons for it, yeah. That's his profound belief. Orwell, Spain is an epiphany for Orwell.

It's where his views crystallise. and he believes he has seen something extremely profound, though he's quite clear when he writes homage to Catalonia that everyone has their own truth and this is his. Because it goes to Catalonia, he's near Barcelona. He's near Barcelona. It seems to be quite apparent that Orwell, from all of his books, including Animal Farm,

that Orwell believes he has encountered the truth of Stalinism in Spain. And he joins a little anarcho-syndicalist group, doesn't he? He doesn't join any of the big groups. And he isn't on the front line, although he is involved in Skirmish and he does get wounded. What does he think is the essence of Talism that he sees while he's there? Orwell fights through an entirely accidental process with a militia group called the Pum, which is a dissident Trotskyist group, though it quasi-Trottsky's group,

and who's the leader of the Pum has been Trotsky's secretary, even though they've fallen out. So, Nene, that the leader of the Pum is part of the Soviet Old Guard, even though he is now plowing a very singular furrow. This group is only strong in Catalonia, in Catalonia, and it's small even there. It collaborates with the anarchists, but it's not part of the anarchists. It's a long way from where the real military action is. Where does he get his hard evidence about the effects of Stalinism in Spain? He believes, Orwell believes that Stalin is acting directly in Spain.

Orwell's view, the Spanish Communist Party has no autonomy at all. The orders are coming directly from Moscow, which is not. not right, but that's what he perceived. There is an uprising in Barcelona in May 1937, which will be familiar to many people from All Well's account in homage to Catalonia. In the aftermath of the May uprising, the Pum is suppressed and there is no doubt that the mood against Trotskyism and against dissidents within the common turn and certainly within the Soviet Union were very very strongly against the PUM

which is suppressed whose members are imprisoned its militias are disbanded and its leader and Reonin is arrested by the NKVD and killed. So he has that line there and he comes back to this country he wants to go to the Second World War but the wound prevents him

from going in Rob Coles can we as he starts Animal Farm in 1943 don't get to our Mouton Can you describe his political views at that time? If we took a slice through his mind, what are his political views in 1943?

Well, I mean, Steve and Mary are right. The first thing about George Orwell is that he goes his own way. He's a spontaneous person, does what he wants, never filled in an expense account, never applied for a fellowship, never had a chair, does what he wants. He comes back from Burma with a sick note, gets to South World decides he's not going back. It was a wound, wasn't it?

No, from Burma. He had a signal from Burma. Oh, sorry, I thought you meant. My mistake, yeah. He just does what he wants. Goes to Spain because he wants to go to Spain. Goes to Wiggin because someone said he should, turns up, doesn't like it. This is the kind of man you're dealing with.

But then the war comes. And I think the really important thing about the war is that at last he's in step with something else. And that something else happens to be the English people, part of which he creates, and of course part of which they create in him. And he's actually looking for his brother-in-law, Lawrence, who's in the Royal Army Medical Court, Dunkirk,

and he's looking for him at Victoria Station. And he can't find him because Lawrence is dead. And he sees a squad of Marines stamping across the station, and he suddenly says, I then felt we were in this. this war and we can win it. This is really important for him because it's the reconciliation of this rebel Englishman with his own people. So in 1943 he's on the back of some... Can I intercede for one second? Because you said he got nothing out of Wrigan, I thought he

got an immense amount out of Wiggin. For the first time in his life he meant he met working class people who were not down and outs who had found their own education who could hold down jobs. the word decent profan... He met a different sort of England, and I think he buried that as deep in him as he buried empire. No, he didn't like Wiggin, or Sheffield or Bansley. He said they were indescribably ugly,

although he does, of course, go on to describe how ugly they are. He's talking about the architecture, not about the people. He gets masses out of Wiggin. It is his first reconciliation with England. But being Orwell, he goes to Wiggin to attack capitalism. It comes out of it attacking socialism. He goes to Spain to attack fascism

and comes out of it attacking communism. You never quite know where you are with this guy. But you do after 1941. And he's on side. And he's happy. He's actually happy near this building. He's working for the BBC. He then moves to Tribune.

He's living a richer, literary, more liberal kind of life than he's ever done before. And he's on song. You say in your notes He came to believe that Eaton and the Empire had taught him everything

he was fundamentally against That's right Until 1940 When he starts to row back He is against capitalism He's against England He's against the middle classes He's against clergyman's daughters

He's against everything But then suddenly he starts to There's a shift in his thinking and his writing, where he becomes more forgiving of the things he was once implacably against. And England is the main actor in this. But the motors still seem to be Eaton, Empire, and perhaps even Wiggin.

No, he never, ever goes back on his dislike of the Empire or Eaton. But Wiggin, one mile below ground, 800 yards out, in the darkness, he actually sees something. And that what he sees is England, an England he can admire. Are we friends now? Never doubted it. Why should I? I mean, Steve, Chief Connard, can you briskly summarise the plot of Animal Farm?

I know most people listening will know it, but just in case. Yeah, it's a story of paradise briefly gained and then slowly and painfully lost. The animals in Manor Farm seize their freedom. from corrupt Mr. Jones, drunken corrupt Mr. Jones, the farmer for a while. All is well. They take control of the farm. Everyone is working hard, but they're happy. Almost immediately, though, there are signs of trouble ahead. The pigs, who are the intellectuals leading the revolution,

which has been announced by an old bore called Major, who's a sort of mixture of Marx and Lenin, it seems. The pigs begin to take special privileges, for themselves, led by there are two pigs, Napoleon and Snowball. Snowball is the more visionary, but is driven out by Napoleon and his group of

vicious dogs. Slowly, all of the principles of the revolution are gone back on. Slowly Snowball becomes the great enemy of the revolution and slowly Napoleon begins to make accommodation with all the local farmers. Until in that final,

all climactic scene that nearly everybody knows. The animals look into the farm in perplexity to see the pigs with the local farmers indistinguishable. They couldn't tell which were pigs and which were humans. It's an extraordinary book because he does say a fairy story. But it's harrowing. I must have read it several times. I read it again for this programme. And as soon as the pigs

took the milk to put into their mash and wouldn't distribute them, I just felt, oh, no. No, it's really going to happen. And I'd probably forgotten that bit. But the inexorableness of it and the sort of destructiveness of the animals who are so full of hope. It's a, it has great power. It really is that. And I think the worst scene is the moment when a boxer, the heroic proletarian horse, he works, works and works. And all he wants to do is to work to build this great windmill, you know, the endlessly deferred five-year plan on the windmill.

and he's sent off to the knackers yard. And only one of the animals, Benjamin, the donkey, and people have sometimes identified with him with Orwell, Benjamin, who only ever says donkeys live a very long time. Is the only one who protest. Have you ever seen a dead donkey? Mary Vincent, how closely you connect the animals,

can we connect the animals with historical figures of that time? At that time, I think they are clearly historical figures, but they're also clearly something more than that. They're also allegorical. So Major, I agree with Steve. He's this visionary prophetic figure who sees the sunlight uplands of the revolution. But I think it's hard to say that he's... Major being an old boar with an A, not with an E, yes.

Indeed. But to say that it's quite hard, you couldn't say that that is Lenin also. Napoleon, I think everybody would agree, is clearly designed to be Stalin. but he's also emblematic of dictatorial power. He's emblematic of totalitarianism and of greed and of ambition. Snowball, I think, the pig who is expelled from the farm, who has the initial visionary,

and importantly is the military tactician for the first set-piece battle in the... The Battle of the Cowshed. It's usually identified with Trotsky, and he is Trotsky. He is the Trotsky figure. actually think he's also overlaid, overlaid, though, with Andrea and Neen, if you've known what's happened to the Pum, in that Nene

and the Pum are also expelled. They're also discredited. They're also denigrated by the leaders of the Revolution and the Communist Party. The Communist Party. But I do think another thing is the animals, the beasts of England,

who work at the farm, who are less differentiated as characters, their types, but they're honest, They're decent, they're hardworking, particularly boxer, the cart horse. These are, this is England, this is All Wells England, but is also, I think, the common man. It's also the international proletariat, the description of animal farm in the initial stages of revolution when they've driven out Jones and things are hopeful and optimistic. That's Allwell's state of affairs worth fighting for. That's what he saw in Barcelona and said there was much that he didn't like or didn't understand, but he knew in his heart.

it was a state of things worth fighting for and always started first principles he discovered things for himself and I think animal vision animal pharmacy's vision of what he's discovered through his life the place of propaganda and memory plays in it but I hope we'll come back to that Rob. Rob Gould says he's written this book

he wrote it in four months but I understand it he told nobody was writing it we have no notes about him writing it he kept to himself and he didn't he did and now he tried to get it published he had a lot of books published someone done okay

what was the objection to publishing it was widespread and it was very difficult to him to get a publisher well as you say he wrote it very quickly four months he told nobody but his wife and Eileen's important here but when it's finished in March 44 he can't find a publisher and he goes through six publishers and there's all kinds of reasons offered

but in the end can you give us some examples Well, you know, Collins say, oh, we can't publish it because it's too short. Oh, it says, well, come on, there's a paper shortage, surely. I'm helping you. His standing publisher, Glantz, Victor Goulantz, big man around town here, demands it, contractually, really wants it, gets it, and has to say, oh, well, sorry, but you were right, I really can't publish this. His Galance was a fellow travelling communist, so he couldn't possibly publish it.

Cape, Jonathan Cape, actually says, yes, I will. But then he thinks, oh, I'm bettering up the Ministry of Information, who tell him, no, you better not. Stalin's our ally. Actually, the guy who tells him is a man called Smollett, who's a spy working at the Ministry of Information, where Eileen used to work. So this is a small world which Orwell responds to.

And then there's T.S. Eliot. We must get T.S. Eliot in before. And of course there's T.S. Eliot at favour and favour. At favour and now, Elliot. Now, Elliot writes a wonderful letter, a very prescient letter. If there's any criticisms to be made of animal farm, Elliot does it well. But Elliot's turned Orwell down before. He turned down, down and out in Paris and London, said it was a great work, but they couldn't possibly publish it.

Basically, Elliot does the same thing again. Great work, very good, but no, not now. So in the end, Orwell is scattering around, looking for some money with David Astor, might publish it privately. When suddenly Fred Warburg is the hero of this story, steps in and says he'll do it if he can have Orwell's subsequent work. Warburg and Orwell have worked before. In 1940, they founded something called Searchlight Books, which was anti-fascist. And Orwell is so happy to have this publisher at last.

However, Warburg then takes one year to publish it. And Orwell misses his most provocative moment. Because if it been published in the year he writes it, when the Soviets were at the height of their heroic status in this country, it would have been a seriously provocative book. But by the time it is published in August 45, the Russians are victorious in the east, the Americans and British are victorious in the West.

We've all met in the middle, and the Cold War has begun. And the tide has begun to turn in favour of animal farm. Orwell would have much preferred if the tide hadn't been in favour of animal farm and it had been a bomb dropped in the ocean. Still, it wasn't too unusual for a book to take about that long to get. I've got to defend Fred Wurba, because I think he was a heroic publisher in many ways. He took on Catalonia when nobody else would take it on.

Catalonia didn't sell out his first edition for about 10 or 12 years. Anyway, he took it on, he got published, and what was the immediate reaction? Well, the immediate reaction, of course the old left, the Communist Party of Great Britain, couldn't forgive Orwell for being so wrong. Just like 10 years later, the new left, couldn't forgive Orwell for being so right. So the left really didn't take to it. Labour had other things on its mind in August 45.

There wasn't a big response there. Although, of course, Orwell was working for Tribune and close to... The Left Green magazine, yeah. Yeah. The right, I mean, there were a few people who read it and liked it, on the right, but it didn't really take off as a right-wing text,

if you want to see it that way, until the Cold War happened in the 50s, and the Americans started buying it by the tens of thousands. Thank you. Steve Conner, we've got the Seven Commandments of Animalism in the structure of animal farm. Now then, you seem to be the summariser at the moment. Return to the Great Summariser.

Okay. What is it? Why do they want the Seven Commandments on the Wall of the Barn? And what's the key to them? Well, I mean, I think there's a whitewash is absolutely right. That's their function, because their function is to be withdrawn. And Orwell's got a problem because he's got a long and quite ragged and, of course, still ongoing history that he wants to allegorize here.

So he's got to have a structure. And these commandments are brilliant. They're like a little meter ticking away in the corner of the screen, so to speak. So the seven commandments progressively are either, sneakily qualified. No animal shall drink alcohol and then the words to excess. That's coming in later. That's coming later. So the seven

commandments are anyone with two legs is your enemy, anyone with four legs is your friend. No animal should wear clothes. No animal shall drink alcohol. No animal shall sleep in a bed. No animal shall kill any other animal. And they all of them get and then finally all animals

are equal. In the end they're either qualified out of existence or frankly erased until finally there is only one commandment. All animals are equal and as everyone famously knows but some are more equal than others. Rob. Well I think Steve's doing a good job here but I just have to underline it. Humour is not something Orwell's famous for but this book is hilarious actually if you read it in the right tone. Just by the commandments you see how how funny it all is. But, you know, Snowball is a great name for a man

who believes in permanent and international revolution, never stopping. And Orwell Snowball, who is Trotsky, is awarded Animal Hero First Class, but a dead sheep is awarded Animal Hero second class. I mean, the thing about Animal Farm, and he was, I mean, Orwell was criticized by people, said, well, look, this is about totalitarianism,

but what about Nazism? that's totalitarian too. And I think Orwell felt he somehow, I mean, there's a mixture of the vile, the vicious, and the absurd in Soviet Russia that I think Orwell just doesn't see in Nazism. And he's very angry when people represent Hitler as a buffoon. But there's just that strange mixture of the hilariously ridiculous. All of these animals going and confessing their various transgressions in the sort of show trials for which they're instantly slaughtered.

Yes, and I think you see that as well in Orwell's experience in Spain or how he interpreted his experience in Spain because I think homage to Catalonia has exactly that same mix of humour and bitterness. What it isn't is satire. I mean, clearly in Animal Farm it's been developed to become this very powerful satire and it is funny but that humour is undercut by bitterness I think which I think relates directly to what he saw in Spain and I do think the fact that he believes he has witnessed

something that he believes to be true is why this is about Stalin and no, Hitler doesn't appear and that wider conception of totalitarianism doesn't appear. But Franco doesn't appear in homage. You know, this is about the left and that's how he believes the ordinary working man,

the decent people of England or of Catalonia, have been betrayed, and they've been betrayed by the left. They may be fighting. Sorry. I was trying by the left. Sorry. No, please.

Do you think its power comes from its inexorability? The pigs steal the milk for their mash. They then steal the fallen apples, which are supposed to be distributed around everybody, and they steal more and more and more. Once that happens, you know the end is almost in sight then. Do you think that gives its power?

Because it has a, I did say, rather colloquially, it does pack a tremendous much. It really does. It really does. And I agree with that about the inexperability. And I also. think that Orwell's epiphany in Spain is that he thinks he has seen the truth of Stalinism

that it is inexorable, that this will happen. Rob, he's a strange guy though. I mean, not long after he writes Animal Farm, he's saying he would hate to see the Soviet Union destroyed and he would fight in its defence. There's no bull, if you see what I mean, in Animal Farm except Orwell, who pushes things.

And as for the humour, Mary and the bitterness, they're part of the same package. The pigs are ridiculous figures. There's a wonderful, wonderful deadpan scene after the Battle of the Cow Shed when they discover the whiskey. And Orwell just says Napoleon was seen slipping out the back door

with Mr. Jones's bowler hat on and he ran twice round the farmyard and disappeared back into the door again. Nothing, in other words, happened, but he's a ridiculous. this figure. There is one moment, I think, when there's a little bit of sympathy, and it's when they've discovered the whiskey for the first time,

and they've all drunk hugely to excess of this. So the day after an edict goes out that no animal shall ever touch alcohol ever again, just as humans, make similar resolutions. Yeah, Squealer comes and tells it, Squealer, who is the mousepiece of Napoleon and propagandist comes and tells everybody,

the Napoleon is dying. That's right. And then late afternoon, Napoleon is slightly recovering. That's right. We all been there. And by them, don't worry animals, the opponents are back in town. And there are actually moments in the novel, in the story,

where there really is a glimpse of a kind of paradise. There's one marvellous pastoral moment when the animals look out over the landscape and they think, yes, this is ours, we can work this and make this idea. This is, of course, England they're looking at, and he never gives up his belief in the land and working the land properly

that this land will sustain you. He never gives up. faith in that. Mind you, I think this animalism and the land does have Malthusian problems with it, if you're never going to slaughter an animal. I don't know where this farm would ever stop.

No time for vegetarian, so did he? That as well. But he never gives up. And actually there's a scene, a very sad and bitter scene, Mary, where the animals suddenly, they get it really. They're a dreary a lot, but they get it. And they all sing beasts of England miserably. And you know,

there's a scene in the deer hunt, a great film, which at the end of the film where they sing, God bless America, miserably. Perfect. Well, that's also because Beasts of England is the international. I mean, that's the kind of the rousing song, which again can be used for these sort of improvised purposes, as Allwell would have experienced in Catalonia, without any doubt at all. But I do think it's interesting that Animal Farm, the landscape is so English. That's so one of the many paradoxes about all well. It's so English because this is an international socialist. This is

a man who believes in anti-fascism, in international alliances against the Nazi and the fascist enemy. He's been to Spain to fight in a war that wasn't his and yet animal farm, it's resolutely English. And as a boy, when he wasn't at school, he was

brought up in Henley and Southwool, you can't think of two more English towns if you stayed a week working on it. I'd like to come to you, Steve Connor. A recurring theme is the rewriting of history. It happens all the time. And it's allied with a forgetting of history. Yes.

Napoleon, squealer or Napoleon says, this happened. And the animal said, I can't remember now. Did it? Maybe it did. Or did it not happen? Well, I think it didn't. Maybe it didn't. And he's playing with that all the time.

Yes. The fragility of memory and the importance, those two things combined, are, I think, the strongest motivators for all. Well, it's there just as powerfully in 1984 that he would go on to, right, you know. And even more desperate, I think, in 1984, the sense that it might all just go. And Orwell himself is, of course, working for the media. He's actually working in the Ministry of Information.

He's making radio programs. He's actually in the middle of this machine that he doesn't think much of. He thinks it's criticising. He thinks that, I mean, it's not so much that lies are being. told, although he leaves the BBC when the BBC issue a pamphlet saying that you you shouldn't put up with people saying

that Uncle Joe Stalin is corrupt, you know, so he's very concerned about that. But he's mostly just concerned about trivialising, about people just being fobbed off with silliness. I mentioned fairy tale in my introduction because it was a fairy story story and Beatrice Potter, but Swift was a big impact, had a big influence

on him here, didn't it? Yes, I... Jonathan Swift, God of us travels. It seems to me that the satire is very swifty and both a particular English tradition of satire that he's drawing on, which, again, I think, is really quite English. And the power of it, those animals are definitely, Swifty and characters, they have nothing to do with Disney

or other kind of animalistic feelings. I think there's some Lewis Carroll in there as well, don't you think? There's some sort of whimsy combined with The savagery of Swift. Molly, you mean. Molly with her ribbon. Yes, that's right. And the absurdity of the pigs tottering around

trying to wear shoes and trousers and hats. Now, Rob, one of his main ambition as an artist was to turn politics into art, which he succeeded in this, you say, and I agree with you. But politics is also politics. So how did he figure in the political left? How did this book, and he figure in the political left, after 1945? Well, I mean, big things are happening in the world.

I mean, the world is shaking. This book's nothing. It's just a little book. I mean, a week before it's published, Nagasaki and Hiroshima go off. So just to get a sense of things, this is just a book. I mean, it provides the art, it provides the commentary, provides the satire to a dangerous and bloody world. Later on, he has his victory when the Cold War gets into action and Animal Farm becomes a kind of soft power

in the British and American education system. During the 50s, he becomes saintly and heroic figure. But at the time, nothing. Personally, he's in a good place politically. He completely gives himself to the labour. party. He absolutely adores Anoran Bevan, who he gets to know well at Tribune.

And his personal life is pretty good until typically, in an Orwellian way, suddenly his wife dies. And Eileen, we've talked about him all the time, we should just say one word about Eileen O'Shaughnessy, his wife.

She was a very important figure in his personal life and in his literary life. And she dies suddenly on the operation table in March 45 and I think Orwell, after that, goes into another dark place after this wonderful period of fun and comedy

with edge that Animal Farm represents. In the preface to the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm, he describes himself as a widower with two daughters. Men don't describe themselves as widowers anymore. It's very touching. Widower with one adopted son. I wanted to make a point about Eileen actually because Eileen, as well, who's been with all while in Spain,

has been instrumental in getting out of Spain after he's wounded in the neck, when, of course, as a registered member of the Poon militia, you know, he has come to the attention of the authorities. They're not massacred. The Poon is... Nene is a singular case. But Eileen has been hugely important.

She's been with him to Spain all the time, albeit not at the front line. But she's also, surely, the first audience for Animal Farm. And she has also seen what he... he has seen in Spain. I mean, she's part of that epiphany. So in terms of reinforcing the story and the ideas behind it, I think Eileen must have been a crucial point. Her letters are completely not like his letters. His letters are, as you'd expect, serious and plain. Her letters are fun and witty and self-deprecating. She's really important to him. Yes, I also just want to mention

that, though, because in terms of the characters in animal farm, the only delineated female character is Molly the silly cart pony, which I struggle with slightly. No, no, no. Clover is a mayor. Yes, but her gender is not delineated in the way that Molly is. We know that Molly's female. But Orwell took that very seriously.

One of the wisest things he ever wrote was invaying against people who complained about poor people spending their money on luxury. She says, when you're poor, it's the little things you don't need that are most important to you. They don't matters to rich people, they really matter, and that's

very wise, it's King Lear. If you can afford a ticket for the races, it matters very much when you've got very little money. So Fripery I think he's sort of quite, I don't think he's just mocking Molly there. No, but it is noticeable that the wielders of power, which of course is also violence, in terms

with the reign of the dogs in particular, that is male. Yeah, but that's what's happening. It is. So he's, in that sense, being true to history. He's being true to what he thought was the inexplicable the actual nature of South Terranism. What happened?

Stalin was a man. Indeed. Right. So I think that's fair enough. It moves on. But I think... Just remember, Mary, the farmer's run by two old boars. Marx and Napoleon. No Lenin, mine.

Well, major, possibly. Was the shortness of it, which was remarked on a few times, as one of the reasons for not publishing it? Was that remarked on at all, Steve? Shortness and plainness. Shortness and plainness. A plainness, a kind of, a kind of, I mean, it's easy to read Orwell and think, well, there's no spin on this at all.

It's just straight, but actually there's something very, very poised about the voice, which is always representing the collective. But you can never quite, you know, read the spin on it. And there's, it's sort of, it's almost biblical at times, actually, the writing. There's one sentence that is one of the finest sentence he ever wrote. The animals were generally hungry. They slept on straw, they drank from the pool, they laboured in the fields. In winter they were troubled by the cold and in summer by the flies. And that's the sentence that could have been written by Benjamin the donkey.

It gives nothing away, and yet it's sort of instinct with all of that kind of steady, blotting, suffering. It's beautiful, actually, to contrast that biblical rhythm and timbre with the distribution of language in animal farms. It's the power of the farm operates through language. And it's the pigs who dominate the language. And the language they speak is rubbish. It's cliched and it's lies. And you put their lies against that. I think the point's made.

Yes, and they are the most literate of the animals apart from Benjamin, the donkey, who keeps it to himself. But when I wanted to say about Orwell is I do think his works are so powerful because his writing appears to be, be so plain and so effortless, but it is, of course, the product of enormous skill. And that deceptive nature of all

of all is later writing, everything from homage onwards, I think, is such a tribute to the power of those books. I mean, you could have, it could have gone completely over the top. There was so much, obviously, he wanted to say about this, that he'd been harboring for years and yet actually he holds back so much.

It's so controlled, yes. And is that due to his Experience in rapid journalism, do you think? Regular rapid journalism. I think if you read his wonderful essays and columns written around the same time, you know, you can hear the same voice, that same, the voice of the commentator. I mean, George Orwell sort of invents the thing that gets called cultural studies

about 20 years later. He's seriously interested in seaside postcards, in the ordinary textures of ordinary life, that he's both inside and outside. He writes 80, as I please columns. for Tribune, 80. And he writes about everything. The halter is off.

He teaches the left that flowers are not bourgeois false consciousness. And that for me is Orwell at his peak. Mary, what's your summary of him now? My summary of him now, I think he's an extremely powerful writer. I think he writes some extremely good books. I think he believed that he knew the truth. I don't think he did.

You don't think he did? No, I think he was wrong. he was very, very wrong about Spain. And I think that gave him... So he thought he had seen something in Spain, but I don't think he had seen what he thought he saw. It makes for a very powerful allegory. Personally, I don't think it's true to the history,

even of the Stalin regime. Well, that's an out. Thank you very much, Mary Vincent, Rob Gawes, and Steve Conner. Next week we'll be talking about the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. Thanks for Lushmi. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. So what didn't we talk about that was important?

We didn't talk about the main subject, did he get it right? Did he get it right? Yeah, which I guess is the main subject. In a way, it seems to me he can't get it right because clearly, particularly in a work of this nature, he is simplifying to get across what he believes to be this hugely important truth about the inexorable nature of the totalitarianism of the left,

because I do think it's specifically about... He's right about that, though, isn't he? He's right about the left totalitarianism. I don't... What do you mean by that, Rob? Well, he's right that the Soviet Union is a barbaric regime. And he's telling things against that power. Truth against the power.

He's telling things no one else is telling. He's talking about the Red Army raping its way through Berlin. He's talking about lots of officers being sent, back to the Soviet Union, where they are certainly butchered. This is a very bad place, and a lot of English people, British intellectuals were willing or trying to avoid the badness of it. Now, he sees a little bit of it in Spain. He sees some blood and some fear, and in one case, the blood and fear are his.

And being a belly-to-earth man, being a Burkean, being a man who prefers the little platoons, he writes about that. Now it's true, he does generalise from that experience as any journalist would. I do think one of the very interesting things about Orwell, I think, is the way he doesn't use external sources.

He goes with his own experience. He doesn't then go and kind of find out what's been happening in Spain, for example. He assumes that what he's seen is a gun. But he is completely wrong, Rob. His analysis of Spanish situation is, really very, very wrong. And that's certainly the idea that Stalin defeated the Spanish Republic. I mean, do you think that Orwell is really, it seems a odd thing to say, really a political writer?

I mean, it seems to me that he starts and starts and remains within some very, very broad items of faith that are quite sort of fuzzy, if powerful. But he always then wants to talk about the smelliness or about the texture of life and will often then generalise back up. I agree with that. You know, because, and I think you have to take it or leave it. He's a writer. He's not a professor of history or English literature. He's a right.

And he's a myth-making. He's a myth-maker and myths can be good. He's a-but-they-are-but-they-are-all-was-lmaker. And also, I'm not saying that I'm certainly not defending Stalinism or the show trials of the 1930s, or indeed the enormous war casualties that the Soviet Union suffered. in the during the Second World War yeah

but I do think that when talking about some things that haven't happened when Animal Farm is written that it actually is doing exactly what people have used your world to do to say that he was you know he was prophetic he saw everything about Stalin's Russia and that I don't really think is terrible

that does him a disservice really and I do think Stalin's Russia hideous though the central power is it's still a more complex is a much more complex phenomenon than Allwell ever gives it credit for. For Allwell, it's simply about

repression and double speak. It's about repression and lies, and that's what keeps boiling and power. I could quote you other bits of Orwell, Mary, where he takes a more complicated line actually about the Soviet Union and other systems of power. Particularly the British Imperial one, he writes basically a defence of Kipling against modern fascisms.

I'm not saying he's a profit. I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying he's a writer who bumps into situations and writes about them and moves on. He doesn't sit in a chair, he doesn't have access to the libraries, he has no money,

he just writes what he finds. And given that, given those constraints, I think he does pretty well. But he takes himself with them when he moves on. So he takes himself from Burma back to Wiggen, from Wigan to Spain. from Spain back to Wright

and Orpharm in 1984 when he moves to a fictional Never goes to the 70s. I mean, I'm surprised. Never does. I did a programme about well years and years ago called the Road to Wigan Pier

and it brought in actually before the program went out five of the people on the programme had died so I just caught them in time including the chap who took him to the cold face and Richard Rees was dead

and various others but I talked to Chomsky about him went to Merrick to him and Chomsky was, and he still, I saw him recently, I shared something he was on about a year ago, and we talked again about all. He is absolutely without any qualification for Orwell.

Orwell told the truth, absolutely. Orwell told the truth. Orwell told it as it all. Nobody has done it as well as Orwell. And so, I'm just putting that to you. You said he didn't know what was going on in Spain. Shomsky thought he knew what was going on in Spain. And Omich, Catalonia, is proof of that. Well, and Chomsky's American power in the new Mandarin's is pretty much all well.

I mean, that's the argument. So how much Chomsky arrives at that independently and how much he took from Orwell in the first place? I don't know. I don't think, I mean, I was surprised you say he knew nothing about Spain because he seemed to, a lot of people who have studied it, seemed to think he got quite a lot right in on Mr. Cattle. What I didn't, I didn't mean to say that he,

that was certainly an exaggeration. What I do think, though, is he saw what went on in a small and unimportant part of the Spanish Civil War, and he thought that was what explained the defeat of the Spanish Republic, but it just doesn't. The Spanish Republic is defeated by Franco with the help of Hitler and Mussolini.

It is not defeated by Stalin. Had it not... He does not say that. He writes in a city. He says, Actually, they were never going to win because there were a whole series of... And Mary, he doesn't write politically in the big sense that you write about Spain. He never tries that.

He writes about his belly-to-earth experience, on one occasion, literally belly-to-earth, crawling to the enemy line and throwing in a grenade. The rest of his writing... On a front which didn't move for the entire duration of the war. Sure, he knows that. He hates it there. He's wasting his time. He tries again and again to get the Madrid to fight with the communists

because he admits the people who are doing the real fighting for the Republic are communists in Madrid, not his lot in Catalonia. But his writing about Spain is against the British intelligentsia who are not getting it right about what's going on there. It's not about Spain itself, it's about them. I think there's probably another sense in which he gets it wrong, which is that, I mean, what he's concerned with? We haven't established the first sense, yeah.

What's the experience of living under these circumstances, of the truth changing day by day. I remember intensely vividly, in early 1990, immediately after all the revolutions, we had some Polish academics over. And the thing I wanted to ask them was, what was it like? What was it like to live in a regime like that relentlessly?

And they said, you just never believe anything at all ever. Now, that's not what you get in Orwell. What you get in Orwell is the sense that you don't know and so you're credulous. You know, what's it like in North Korea at the moment? I don't think it's like Animal Farm on 1984. I think it's more like Poland.

I mean, he does coin, double-think for that condition. But I think in a certain kind of way, it's too simple, the account that he gives. The animals are credulous, but that's not typical of how he writes about ordinary people. But you also might not think about it. The sheep are the publishers. Again, he's writing about England. The sheep are the publishers. They just say Napoleon's always right, or was it two legs?

good. That's what they do. They just bleat it out. He's writing about England. He might be in Spain but he's actually writing about here. He's not credulous about working people. No, no, but I think it's that it's that I don't think he quite gets

the quality of strangeness and complexity of living in a world in which you know that things are not right and yet you have no other frame of reference offered to you you know. And I think that's because in a certain

kind of way. There is a bit of Orwell that thinks or hopes it can't happen here. And you can find more discussions exploring the difference between humans and animals. On the arts and ideas download, available from the website of BBC Radio 3's Freethinking.