The Rest Is History - 208. George Orwell

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

George Orwell is one of the most celebrated novelists, essayists, and journalists in modern British history.  Tom and Dominic are joined by Robert Colls, Professor Emeritus of History at De Montfort University, to discuss the life and legacy of the man who wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, and Homage to Catalonia. Join the waiting list for live show tickets: bit.ly/3ynxD56 Become a member of The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him. The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it, a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the

wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide, the face of a man of about 45 with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times, it was seldom working, and at present, the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for hate week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was 39 and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which

are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. Big brother is watching you. The caption beneath it ran. That, of course, is the opening of George Orwell's novel, 1984, published in 1949. And Dominic, I mean, it is up there, you know, the bright cold day in April, the clock striking 13 with, you know, it's a truth universally acknowledged, or it was the best of times, it was the worst of times as one of the most celebrated openings of an English novel. But I guess that what would differentiate 1984 from Pride and Prejudice or Tale of Two Cities is that it's had an incredible political resonance as well, hasn't it? It has indeed. Well, actually, Tale of Two Cities has had quite a political resonance. But

I agree. I think 1984, well, with Animal Farm, they are two of the defining books of the 20th century. And I suppose you could say of our time, because even if you've never read Animal Farm or 1984, you're very familiar with the concepts, the idea of newspeak, of thought crime, of all 20th century writers, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that he is probably the one that has made the biggest kind of imprint on our political consciousness. Yeah. And when you say our, I mean, he has a global reputation. Yes. The word Orwellian is something that would be understood in China or Russia, as well as in the West. But he's also a very, very distinctively English writer, isn't he? I remember when we had our discussion with Jason Cowley on the nature of Englishness in the 21st century, Orwell kept kind of coming up. It was almost as though we couldn't kind of

leave his thoughts and his sentiments alone. And so do you perhaps have someone who's joining us who has written on this subject, Dominic? I do indeed. So we have joining us today a good friend of mine, Professor Robert Coles, Professor Emeritus at De Montfort University in Leicester, whose book, George Orwell, English Rebel, is a brilliant study of Orwell as a writer of Englishness and Orwell as a kind of progenitor of Englishness. But you know Rob Tom through his book on sport, don't you?

I do, I loved it. Actually, I think we discussed it, didn't we, when Jonathan Wilson came on to talk about football. I think he briefly mentioned it. I got given it for Christmas by Sadie and it was one of those great, Christmas reads so very very thrilled to have you on and maybe one day you come on and talk about boxing or something which which is your account of Victorian boxing is still seared on my mind but today we're talking Orwell so

thanks so much for joining us and I wonder could we could we kick off just by looking at Orwell's life or he's not Orwell is he he's he's Eric Arthur Blair sure well thanks for that wonderful introduction you two it's so good it can only be downhill now and it's great to be on the program I've got the whole family listening to you at the moment the podcast is everything I hope university would be and it never was. Oh, we're going to bank that. Definitely. You should open a university between those two adjoining symmetrical studies you've got. We like to think that every episode is a special subject. It's a tutorial in a universe. Yeah. So today's subject is Orwell. He's born in India, isn't he? Yeah, he's born in Bengal in Motohari in 1903. I mean, he's born at the imperial high noon of the Raj.

And he's born into an imperial family. His mother is French. Her family are... God, I didn't know that. Yeah. Good grief. Just hold on to your seat, Tom. You never know what you might learn the next hour. Wow. His mother, they were teak exporters out of Burma. They were called limousin. So his mother was French imperialist. His father was, as everybody knows, deputy sub-commissioner, sixth grade, opium trade, which the British ran for China.

And of course, on Eric's paternal side, way down the line, they were West Indian planters and slave owners. So between the teak and the opium and the sugar, he's certainly born into an imperial family. But he doesn't stay in India long, does he? Because he moves back when he's, what is he, about one or two or something? Yeah. He's moved out. There's a plague in Bengal at the time. And his mother takes him and his elder sister, Marjorie, home. And they come to Henley-on-Thames. Very nice. Thames Valley, which he came to call the golden country. He came to Henley-on-Thames in 1904,

where he lived with his mother and sister. His father remained in India, remained in the Imperial service. But the thing about him that's really interesting is his class position. And Orwell was a brilliant writer about class because he had this wonderful formula. He said, we were part of the lower upper middle class, which our overseas listeners will find absolutely the most English thing you could possibly say. But basically, I mean, to cut a long story short, and correct me if I'm wrong, Rob, it's a family with expectations and with a certain sense of respectability and all that, but without the money really to uphold it. Is that about right? Yeah, that's about right. When he says upper middle, he means the cultural

ambience and tradition of the family. There's one or two oil paintings floating around. There's a set of leather books, there's cutlery with the family crest on it. But when he says lower, that is upper lower, he means no money. I think there was once a society my flatmate at university's mother was in it called the Society for Distressed Gentlefolk. Although the players weren't quite that, we English know exactly what lower upper middle means. Yeah, old clothes that are fraying he goes to ethan right so i mean he can't be that lower if you're going to eat or am i being naive no well you see tom he's got the culture he's got the upper bit and he goes to prep school he's clever as far as i can make out the family are serious and talk serious.

So he's a natural scholarly boy. We should never underestimate his intellectual ability. So he goes to Eton on a scholarship. He is what I think they call a collager rather than an opperdan. And that's how he gets there. A lot of brains, a lot of style, good traditions, but no money. He's a King scholar, which is, you know, that's not nothing. I mean, they live in college,

which is their own special house for the scholarship boys at Eton. And the Eton thing is really interesting because Orwell is one of the great writers. As Tom knows, I'm obsessed with kind of schools and school stories and all these kinds of things. I think they're so interesting and so formative. And Orwell was one of the great writers about school stories. He very famously wrote this essay about Billy Bunter, who's very much a friend of the rest of his history.

A friend of you, I think, Dominic, to be fair. Sorry? A friend of you, to be fair. Is he not a friend of you, Tom? No, I have no time for Billy Bunter. I've never read him. What? time no you've lived to that age you've never read billy bunter this is absolutely outrageous well anyway it's too busy reading about dinosaurs sorry but rob he's really interesting in his relationship with ethan isn't he because the school of obviously very you know to this day very proud of him he writes very damningly about

the world of kind of public schools and all this stuff. And yet, when he left, he went to Old Etonian dinners. He hung around with Old Etonian friends. I mean, right to the end of his life, the Old Etonians were the people who were kind of clustered around him, weren't they? And that sort of goes to one of the contradictions with Orwell, which is that he's both of the kind of British establishment, but also stands outside it and criticizes it. So what's going on there? Well, he's full of contradictions. I mean, we all are, but Orwell rather reveled in them. For him, Eton was never oppressive. I mean, he's against it. He's against it like he's against the Soviet Union. It's a massive thing that he's politically and morally against.

But when you start plumbing Orwell's actual feelings and emotions, then Eaton actually, I think, is not his enemy. It's not his problem. As a collager, he was allowed all kinds of freedoms and liberties to be who he wanted to be. He was clearly known as a bit of a character, a kind of mad geek, a guy who would shock you and appall you at the same time, but then make you laugh. So I think he was not unhappy at Eton where he had the freedom. So he doesn't get kind of bullied by the Toffs for being upper, lower, whatever he is. None of that's going on. No, he doesn't talk kind of bullied by the Toffs for being upper, lower, whatever he is.

None of that's going on. No, he doesn't talk about that at all. I mean, there are photographs of him playing the Eaton Wall game. He's a big lad. He's actually got shoulders in these photographs. This is before his TB. So he's a big, strong guy. And he's a character. And, you know, people who've got that kind of halo of character around them tend to survive in institutions like that.

The school he hated, the school that which was a fascist institution, according to him, was his prep school. Completely different kind of place, private, money grubbing and hammering the kids to win the scholarships. Eaton was different. Well, his academic record at Eaton was a bit mixed, wasn't it? Because he spent a lot of time, as you say, playing the war game and being a character and writing school newspapers or whatever. So he can't, and his family don't think he'll win a scholarship to university and they can't afford to send him. So he goes for the Imperial Police, doesn't he, in Burma. burma and that's again orwell is one of the

great writers who wrestles with the kind of you know the the iniquities or the contradictions of empire and yet here he is as a in his late teens voluntarily choosing to join the imperial police so again is that family pressure or is that there is there something in him that actually quite likes at that stage the idea of empire and the idea of the East and all that sort of stuff? Yeah, I think we've got our finger on him pretty early. There's a big argument about why he didn't go to university. I mean, all his contemporaries did. His girlfriend at the time said he wanted to go, but the parents couldn't afford it.

Well, maybe. But I think Orwell just did what he wanted to do, Dominic. If he fancied going to Spain to fight, off he went. If he wanted to go to Wigan, he went to Wigan. If he wanted to live in a bedsit, he lived in a bedsit. He just did it. And there's no sign of his politics in Eton, so I don't think he's going to be anti-imperialist. He wrote a couple of pretty bad poems in favour of the war. He's only a school boy, of course. Mind you, having said that, he's already writing pretty amusing things for the Election Times, which is Eton's newspaper. Pretty good, pretty funny. So he's talented. He has an imperial tradition in the family. I think the prospect of the university

might have looked pretty boring to him, actually, compared to Burma and the East and sex and Orientalism and all that. I think he might have wanted to go. Do you think that there was perhaps a kind of strain of perversity that Eton fosters? And so if you become famous as a character at school and you're a character because you are perverse, because you do the things that are the opposite of what everyone else does, perhaps that sets you on a groove that you stick to for the rest of your life. And perhaps if everyone else is going to university, then you go off and join the police or something. It's a marker of how different you are. I think that's right. I mean, I didn't go to public school, but the nearest I came to it

was university. I think what happens is when you go to total institutions, it's easier. You find it easier if you have a known persona. And I think he found that at public school, and I think he was seeking to find it too in the empire, as well as all that romance and excitement that the empire, believe it or not, for boys of that type at that time, beckoned. Yeah. Just before we leave Eton, he was taught by Aldous Huxley at Eton, wasn't he? Which is, given the two great prophets, dystopian prophets of the 20th century, that is the most amazing coincidence.

And do we know what they thought of each other? I've got some little memory of an exchange in the classroom. I think Huxley was teaching French. He was, yeah. I think he was French. But Orwell was behind the desk. And I've got a vague memory that Huxley wasn't a particularly good teacher

and Orwell was the kind of kid who would let you know about that. But nothing definite, no. Right. So you said about the glamour of the empire. I mean, it's kind of conveyed through schoolboy comics at exactly this age. And that's exactly the kind of subject that Orwell will subsequently write essays about. But when he goes out, famously, he ends up having to shoot an elephant. To what extent is the way he writes about that an actual reflection of what happened?

Or is he self-mythologizing? There's a lot of argument, Tom, about that essay. Did he really shoot an elephant? Or is it a complete metaphor for the empire that is a dying elephant? Or is it a bit of each? Really hard to tell. I don't think we should really worry about it. Like so much of Orwell, I think he's better at the essays than he is at the novels. And this is a stunning, stunning essay on, in a way, how for a young policeman like him, the empire bullies him rather than he bullies the empire. He doesn't want to shoot this elephant. He doesn't know how to shoot this elephant.

He has to send for the gun to shoot the elephant. But when he takes aim at the elephant, by the way, a very expensive piece of capital in the Burmese economy, an elephant, and the crowd want him to shoot the elephant. So he has to act like the white man has to act. He has to be brave and fearless and take the elephant down, although he doesn't want to do any of these things. So the point he's making is that the imperialist wears a mask. It's not really him. It's the things, the subject people expect him to be. Yeah, that he's the prisoner of their expectations, isn't he? He's their prisoner rather than they are his prisoner. And there's he's the prisoner of their expectations, isn't he? He's their prisoner

rather than they are his prisoner. And there's about 2000 of them, of course, compared to him on his own, and he's only about 22 or something. So it's a great essay in that sense. There aren't many things I used to get my students to read out aloud in class where they were visibly moved. But I've had students crying while reading that essay. The death of the elephant is really very moving, powerful stuff. He describes what the elephant feels to be shot and to die on its knees. And it's exactly the same descriptions he attaches to his own when he himself is? And this produces the famous essay, Shooting an Elephant, but also the essay, A Hanging, because he has to hang somebody, doesn't he? He's part of a little posse that lead this guy out. And again, hang him in front of a crowd.

Is it in front of a crowd, Rob? Well, no, not a crowd. Just a few policemen and officers in a prison yard. He comes back from Burma in 1927. I mean, he's 24 years old. He's only 24, and he's had two lifetimes, Eton College and Burma. He declares to his parents he wants to be a writer. I mean, you can just see the look on their faces. He may as well have said, I want to wear a tutu, really. A tea trick graph on Hus and Hazleton. So he comes back to England and we've got a question from GT Avelado who asks, what was wrong with the name Eric Arthur Blair?

Because it's when he comes back to England, isn't it, that he starts to adopt the pseudonym. So why George Orwell? What's wrong with the name he's got? Eric Blair. He adopts it around 1932, 1933. It becomes natural to him, actually, Tom. He ends up signing himself George.

His wife ends up calling him George. But why? Well, we don't know, really. George, St. George, patron saint of England, perhaps? Well, you know, we can do that. We can say a cigar signifies something else. Yes. But the river, is it named after the River Orwell?

Well, the River Orwell's in Suffolk. His parents are in Suffolk. He loved, he was a great naturalist. He loved the countryside. It's a broad and slow-moving river, very nice image. Some people say he wasn't too keen on the Scots. Therefore, he didn't like the name Blair. Of course, Blair has all kinds of resonances in our own times. But anyway, he dropped it and he went on using both names, Eric Blair and George Orwell, without much thought, really interchangeable. And then he's sort of drifting around, isn't he? I mean, if you look at him, it's quite a long period after his comeback from Burma, when he's sort of tutoring

and teaching and writing. And when you're young, you're impatient and you feel sort of time slipping away. And actually, he writes these novels in the 1930s that, I mean, frankly, we'll probably skip over them because they're not his best work and they're not much read now. I mean, some people love them, no doubt. But arguably, the book that then makes him is The Road to Wigan Pier. So that's early 1936, Britain in the grip of the Depression. And he goes up north and he writes.

I mean, it's been done already. J.B. Priestley had done it and he writes, I mean, it's been done already. J.B. Priestley had done it, English Journey, a few years earlier. But what is it about that book? I mean, the funny thing, I used to teach that book to my students and they could never get a handle on the fact that the first half was all trudging around mines and sort of working people's houses and saying how simultaneously poor they were, but also cozy and authentic. And then the second half is an attack on middle-class socialists. Well, we'll come to the attack on middle-class socialists. That's a subject after your own heart.

But could I just ask another question from Nicola? I can never decide whether Orwell has a genuine empathy for the working classes or whether he saw them as interesting specimens. So what's your take on that? Well, he's actually, he's thrashing around for something to believe in, really. He's a natural contrarian. I think it was Martin Amis called him an auto contrarian. Now there's somebody who gets off by arguing with himself. Hitchens says he's always taking his own temperature. So here's a man arguing endlessly with himself as well as the establishment. But the point is he's looking for something to believe in.

And when he hits the North of England, when he lives with working class people, makes him sound like zoo animals, isn't it? Going to live with working class people, makes him sound like zoo animals, isn't it? Going to live with working class people. When he does that, he finds a part of England and a group of English people he can believe in. And I don't think he's done that before. It's nothing new. You could hardly get on the train north in the 1930s for middle class boys going north to write about how awful it was, but also how authentic it was. And Orwell falls for that.

But the true point is that here he finds an England to believe in. It's not the England of the Raj. It's not the England of Eton. It's not even the England of down and out in Paris and London or London. This is a group of people, a class, if you will, who he cannot possibly join. He can't do what they do. Why is he in Wigan? He's not there to do any work. He couldn't do the work. So they're valuable in a way he's not valuable. They count

in a way he doesn't count. So the first half, Tom wrote the Wig and Peer, tells you how valuable they are. The second part really is telling you how useless he is. He's looking in the mirror and saying, I'm a middle-class socialist, what on earth can we possibly do? Can I quote you? Oh, no. Yeah, go on. Okay. Middle-class socialists, according to Orwell, may speak for the workers. They may go in search of the workers. They may praise the workers, but secretly they dislike the workers for being working class, just as they dislike themselves for being middle-class.

Yeah. Well, you obviously do think it's true if you wrote it. So there's all kinds of things to unpack there because, of course, it's in that book as well that Orwell has this passage that when I used to teach it, my students always were shocked by, where he says the working class is smell. He said we were always told, you know, as middle class people,

that the working class is smell, and they do smell. There is a distinctive smell to them, the smell of sweat and dirt and all this kind of thing. And even now people are shocked when they read that, I think. So there is an extent, isn't there, to which he's seen working class people as specimens. But also, do you think there's a self-hatred, a genuine self-hatred? Or is it sort of, to use the jargon, is it performative? Is it put on for literary effect? No, I don't think it's real self-hatred. I don't think he wants to, I mean, he says somewhere in argument that to disembouchoisify himself, that is to cease to be middle class, would be to kill himself. And what sensible person would ever want to do that he's got to live with himself there were

writers at the time who said you know you had to atone for your class background and and and really hollow yourself out and start again this is terrible news to all well he's not going to do that the road to Wigan Pier says that I am who I am but at the same time he does see these people these amazing valuable people in his eyes he's see these people, these amazing, valuable people in his eyes. He's never seen people like that before. He's never even been to the north of England before, except once briefly to see his sister. So he's never rather, you might say he's never breathed in and smelt the air up there. And now he has, and he thinks it's interesting and valuable. So yes, they are specimens in one sense, and he doesn't see all of their lives.

He tends to just see the downside of their lives. The good side of their lives he rather misses. I mean, he's in Wigan. Does he go and see the rugby? No. He's in Barnsley. Does he go and see the football? No.

But nevertheless, he's a fair person, and he's trying to deal with fair questions. He goes to the North thinking that the unemployed are the problem and socialism is the answer. And he comes back from the North thinking the unemployed are the answer and socialism is the problem. Well, this thing about socialism being the problem. I mean, he has these absolutely, you know, these famous lines, which as somebody who spent his life working in universities, you'll be very familiar with, that socialism and left-wing ideas tend to attract every fruit juice drinker, nudist, sandal wearer, and sex maniac in England. Now that really offended, it still offends people, actually, when I, you know, every couple of weeks when i when i put it in the

daily mail and i dig out those lines and put them in britain's most beloved newspaper you know people get very sort of academic people weep and wail and kind of rent their garments you know in misery because they they say oh this is true this is orwell was a dreadful man. You know, he sneering. But they don't, though, do they? High-minded. That's the thing. Some people do. They don't. Some people do, Tom.

I mean, Orwell said terribly politically incorrect things about gay people, about Jews, about all kinds of people. But he hasn't – I mean, he remains a kind of sainted figure pretty much across the political spectrum. He's uncancellable, you think? Pretty much, yeah. Wouldn't you say? Maybe time will tell, I don't know. Or is he uncancellable, or do you think there are sort of high-minded people who shudder at the very mention of his name?

I think you're both right, actually. I think everybody gets the Orwell they deserve. And it's not difficult to be shocked and surprised by him. But on the other hand, whenever a journalist is looking for a bit of moral firepower, bang, in goes Orwell. It happens every day, even in the mail. He was right about the sandalware. I mean, just on the topic of where Orwell stood politically, if I understand you right, basically, I mean, he's ultimately, he's not responding to political opinions. He's responding to kind of gut instincts within himself. Would that be fair? And so to that extent, perhaps he doesn't, you know, it would be wrong to pin him down. So we have a question from a former Labour councillor who is a firm believer in the divine right of kings, who goes by the name of Capple Loft on Twitter. And he asks,

is it true that Orwell was a conservative in feeling and a radical in politics? Some would say a Tory socialist. So I suspect that Capple Loft is basically saying, was Orwell like Capple Loft? Yeah. Well, he called himself a Tory anarchist and a bit of banter around the Adelphi offices. I think it's not a bad definition, actually. I think in his soul, he was not a revolutionary. He did not want to abolish the past. I refer your listeners to your superb program on Mao's Cultural Revolution. He loved the past because it's where his world and our world was made, for better or worse.

But at the same time, he was an anti-establishment in the way he had been at Eton. He couldn't resist pot-shotting at the mighty, the vain, the venal. He loved history. He loved tradition. When he writes about public schools, as Dominic said, he writes with love, actually. But his politics are his rational universe. And he potshots at public schools, rich people, corporations, and so on. I mean, I don't think he's unlike a lot of us. We have the things we love and know best and don't want them changed, but we know there are things that need changing. The question is, how do we avoid changing ourselves by changing the world around us? Yeah. And maybe in that, he really does speak for a very, very important strain within England, certainly perhaps Britain.

And perhaps that's why he has such a significant status. But that word England is central there, isn't it? I mean, your book, Rob, talks about all while in Englishness. writers, certainly the first 20th century writers, to really grapple with the idea of England and Englishness having a distinctive kind of cultural and political meaning, that it's all about the concrete and little things. And that famous passage that I read out on our podcast that we did with Jason Cowley, Tom, the grass is greener, the beer is bitterer, the ugly faces, the money, all of that stuff.

I mean, do you think he's – so in those days, when he was writing, people equated England and Britain. I mean, they did it all the time. But do you think he's really – it's all about England and Englishness rather than Britain and Britishness for him? He writes unashamedly about England, something difficult to do now and was even difficult then because England was supposed to carry the weight of the United Kingdom. And England was big and rich and powerful.

And if it rolled over in bed, it could squeeze you or squash you or roll you out. So England had to stay like, if you like, it had to sleep quietly. Nowadays, it's rather different. It's difficult to be unashamedly English because England stands for all kinds of iniquities and oppressions and imperialisms that some of us are not happy about. But he was different. He was a Republican at heart. And that's why he's a great essayist. The essay is the great instrument of the Republic. And he writes and speaks and feels freely about being English. And I find that really liberating. But it's not in a capital P political way. As you say, Dom, he starts with the details. He starts with the little things. And he also tries to get things right. If we are conservative in one sense and radical in another, he deals with that, or at least he tries to. Well, Rob, you said that Orwell was a Republican at heart. And of course, he goes out to Spain to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. I think we should take

a break. But when we come back, perhaps we could talk about that and then about the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. I think we should take a break, but when we come back, perhaps we could talk about that and then about the impact of the Second World War as well and look at Animal Farm and 1984. So we'll be back in a minute. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news,

reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest is History. We are talking George Orwell with Robert Coles,

Professor Robert Coles, I should say. So Orwell is just about to go off to Spain. It's December 1936. Rob, off he goes. And he joins the PUM, the, what is it? The Partida Obrero de Unificación Marxista. So it's a Trotskyist. I hope everybody enjoyed my Spanish

pronunciation. Muy bien. So it's a Trotskyist group, isn't it? I mean, what's he doing? Because obviously a lot of people do go out to fight in Spain. Is he trying to prove something to himself? Is he genuinely motivated by ideological fervor? What's going on? Well, the first thing that's going on is that he's leaving his wife of only six months. I must mention Eileen O'Shaughnessy, who he marries in June 1936 in Wallington. So he's hardly, you know, he's married six months, they're living in a little cottage and just, he goes, he just wants to go. Why he goes is a bit more tricky, says he wants to kill fascists, but it might be that he wants to write. It may be that

he wants to do what's really, he's itching to do, that is be an active correspondent. I mean, all his instincts are about the detail, about being there. He wants to be there. So he goes to Paris, sees Henry Miller briefly, takes the train across France with other soldiers of the revolution traveling to Spain. The peasants stand up in the fields and straighten their backs and put their fist sign against the soldiers going south on the trains. He absolutely loves this. And arrives in Barcelona, where he finds what he thinks is a socialist or maybe a social anarchist society, but at least a free one. And he can't believe how wonderful things seem. And as you say, he joins this militia group

through the offices of the Independent Labour Party where he has connections. And then it all goes wrong quite quickly, doesn't it? Because he's only been there a few months and the Republicans are torn apart by faction fighting. The communists basically, you know, because the Republican cause is becoming increasingly dependent on Stalin and the Soviet Union. So the communists turn on the poom in the May days in Barcelona. And I get the

impression, and now maybe this is me misreading it, that that is a massive moment in Orwell's life, this sense of betrayal by the communists, because of course, he then becomes famous as probably the single most, well, one of the most famous British anti-communist writers. So do you think that was a transformative moment, what happened in May 1937? Yeah, definitely. I mean, Spain is massive for him. It's a defining experience. He sees blood there and some of it's his own. And he is wrecked, really. His health is seriously wrecked there. And so are his little green shoots of socialism or even Marxism that might have been sprouting a little bit in Wigan, because what he sees is a republic dominated by the Soviet Union, who are the only foreign power supplying the Republic with tanks and weapons, but dominated. And far from the

Soviet Union being too revolutionary for Orwell, it's not revolutionary enough. He thinks it's suppressing the revolution, whereas it should be unleashing it. But the real problem he has is not with the Soviet Union, which is something of an abstraction from where Orwell's standing on the front line. His real problem is with the people on the left in England who are pro-Soviet. And that's where his anger and his sense of revenge really comes. So when he gets back to England, he goes into a writing frenzy against the left, the soft left and the hard left. And of course, out of that frenzy comes Homage to Catalonia, which I think he always regarded as his greatest book. And Rob, also, when he comes back, he talks about the deep sleep of England, doesn't he,

from which it will only be woken by bombs so presumably he in saying that he has a sense that war will be coming to britain and what is his attitude to britain at the time that the second world war breaks out because he's there's been an element of hatred there of hostility of of of dislike for it is that turning to love by the time that the Second World War begins or does it remain a kind of love-hate relationship? Well, politically, he's really confused in this period, 37 to 39. In his position, he takes the Poon position on Spain and just applies it wholesale, slaps it on Britain and Germany. He basically says, unless you fight Germany and revolt against the ruling class, you can't win the war.

So war and revolution go together. So he envisages, you know, London in 1940, the English fighting each other while they're fighting the Germans who are trying to kill them. I mean, it's a completely messed up, trashy, Marxist tactical position. And he can't really deal with it. It doesn't go anywhere. At one point, he's actually anti-war. He lines up with the Independent Labour Party and the

Peace Pledge Union with their pacifism or a form of pacifism. But the point about England and the English is he gets himself straight when at some point in 1939, in the declaration of war, he sees that the people are up for this. Didn't think they would be. They are. There's no panic. There's no shock. There's no enthusiasm either. They're just getting on with it. In Churchill's words, it's just K-B-O. And he aligns with that. He thinks it's real and he thinks it's necessary. And so what is Orwell's own role in the war? Well, he tries to join up. As soon as war is declared, he puts himself forward for the army, but his health is wrecked by then. He doesn't pass the fitness test. He doesn't know what to do. He tries to get an apprenticeship as

a fitter in the factory, a machinist. Doesn't get that. Does a lot of reviews of theatre and cinema. He's embarrassed, deeply embarrassed about that. He tries to join the intelligence corps. He gets nowhere there. They've been watching him for a few years, not him watching others. So in the end, he moves to London in 1940, and he joins what were then called the local defence volunteers, later to become the Home Guard, where he rises through the ranks to sergeant. Private Pike. Sergeant Wilson. He loves it. He loves the Home Guard. And it seems his platoon pretty much liked him.

After all, he knew about street fighting. Because he'd been shot in the throat, hadn't he, in Spain, as you said, and nearly killed. So, I mean, he's a useful man to have in your dad's army platoon. Well, he has a paramilitary background, Dom. I mean, the police in Burma were not bobbies on the beat, you know. I mean, this was a paramilitary force. So he knew about that. And he knew about street fighting from Spain. And along with a guy called Tom Winteringham, who was a left winger in 1939-40, he even thought that maybe the Home Guard could become a British militia, that it could have revolutionary instincts.

I mean, after all, here you have the people who are armed. And although in one sense, that's a real sign of the virtues of democracy. You can arm the people. On the other hand, Orwell and Winteringham seem to think it might be political. It might become political. But either way, he was a useful guy to have around. Yeah. As late as the autumn of 1940, he's writing,

I dare say the London gutters will have to run with blood when the Red militias are billeted at the Ritz. So that's still percolating away in his mind, even as he's signing up to the Home Guard and all that kind of stuff. I think that's Lion and the Unicorn. That's 41. That means the old Poon tactical position of 37 is still operating in his mind in 41.

And it's not really till 42 that he sheds himself of it. He admits that he got it hopelessly wrong. And actually, the people were miles ahead of him. Even Churchill was ahead of him. This was a war that had to be taken on and fought to the finish. And the less you talked about revolution within that war, the better. Well, I was going to ask, when does he start working for the Ministry of Truth, aka the BBC? 41. And is the Ministry of Truth modelled on the BBC? Because that's what I always thought,

but probably that's not true. Well, actually, people often say the Ministry of Truth modelled on the BBC? Because that's what I always thought, but probably that's not true. Well, actually, people often say the Ministry of Truth was based on Senate House in London, which was never the BBC. And he never worked at the BBC headquarters either. He worked, which you two guys know pretty well, he worked in Oxford Street where they'd rented premises. But nevertheless, I mean, he called the BBC a frightful bureaucracy. It was his first introduction to bureaucracy, after all.

It is. Well, yeah, he's not wrong, to be fair, Rob. I mean, this was a guy who'd never held down a proper job, you know, but now he had one. Well, that's like me and Tom. But going back to the politics of the war. So at about that point, obviously, I mean, this great irony of the Second World War, that Britain finds itself allied to the one power that Orwell really detests, that he has a problem with, which is Stalin's Soviet Union.

And so when is it? 1943, that he starts writing Animal Farm. really the high point of our romance of Uncle Joe and the plucky Russians and all that sort of thing. So he's obviously thinking about Animal Farm as a warning, presumably. And do you think it's born of his shock that, you know, so many people are rushing to kind of embrace the Soviet cause, do you think? Or do you think it was always coming anyway, Animal Farm, because of Spain? Well, he never talks about his writing plans, Dominic. We never really know how he's shaping things.

He never talks about how he writes or his plans. The right things just appear. Even his agent really doesn't know what he's doing until he's done it. But in retrospect, you know, he said he thought of Animal Farm when he was in Wallington and he saw a little boy whacking a shire horse along the lane. And he thought, what if that shire horse just turned on the little boy with one great hoof and put him down? What's it about? Well, it's not just about the Soviet Union, I think. I think it's about revolution and how it invariably leads to a vacuum and the vacuum leads to another kind of ruling elite, which may well be worse than the one you replace. I think it's a warning about

revolutions in general, rather than just the Soviet Union. When he was pressed on it, he's actually rather surprisingly mild about his intentions regarding the Soviet Union. He says, well, the Soviet Union's got its problems. They're not my problems directly. I don't really want to get involved in that. My real aim with Animal Farm is to warn the British that the Soviet Union's no model, that we must find our own way and we mustn't stop looking to Russia because it's destroying the hope of real genuine socialism here. But the fascinating thing about Animal Farm is that he struggles to get it published because so many British publishers, they say, you know, we're in bed with the Russians, so

we don't want to publish it. So for example, Victor Galantz, who he'd worked with, T.S. Eliot of Faber and Faber says, it's jolly good, but we don't want to do it. He ends up doing it with Wahlberg. And then of course the CIA take it up, don't they? And they later drop copies by balloon into occupied Europe. And I guess the question really is, is it a right-wing book, do you think? And ultimately, because of the, I mean, that warning about revolution, as you say, I mean, that's classic Edmund Burke, isn't it? Don't tear it all down because, sorry, Tom, you've got a question. Yeah, we've got a question from Tim Fasby-Burney, a top vicar, and he would love to know the public

reaction to Orwell's books. For example, did Animal Farm cause anti-communist feelings to rise? How is it received by communist supporters in Britain? The reaction in Britain, the reviews are great, except for predictably, you know, the Daily Worker and communist reviews are not great. They're cruel. And they say it's a disgraceful, treacherous work. But he doesn't seem to care about that. Dominic's right, he had great trouble getting it published, not just from left publishers, but also from right-wing publishers like Faber and Faber, where T.S. Eliot ruled the roost. There were even communist agents advising publishers from the British Ministry of Information, advising them not to

publish. These guys later turned out to be communist agents. So this went rather deep in Orwell. He knew that communism was a bad idea, but now he knew that it infiltrated and it worked by deceit and deception. And of course, this has great influence on 1984. It's a populist work, actually, Tom, if you really want my opinion about it. There are no left-wing intellectuals in it, really. There's just the people, the animals who are good. Yes, and the pigs who end up more equal than everyone else and basically become humans, don't they? So Old Major is a kind of intellectual, isn't he? Is he a combination of Marx and Lenin? Is that the...

I don't think he's Lenin. I mean, he's not what you might call dynamic. No. Old Major's a prize ball. I don't know if there's a pun there. He's exhibited... Very good. He's exhibited as Willingdon beauty. I mean, there's some respect there. Anyone who calls a pig Willington Beauty must have some respect for pigs. But I think in the end, once a pig, always a pig. So Animal Farm comes out just after the government has come to power and the end of the war. And Orwell then starts on 1984. And the opening of that book that I read,

The Hallway Smelt of Boiled Cabbage and Old Rag Mats, we did an episode on Agatha Christie, where we talked about Agatha Christie's novels holding a mirror up to the era of the Attlee government. And there's a sense, isn't there, in which 1984 is a satire on Atlee's government as much as it is anything. That kind of climate of austerity, of controls. And it's quite a kind of... Am I being unfair there? I think so, yeah. I think I just recently read Keith Richard of the Rolling Stones memoir of post-war London. And what Keith Richard remembers about the potholes and the smashed buildings and the rubbishy cigarettes and all the rest of it is it's there in 1984. It's an account of London damaged, a damaged city. But the other thing that's going on there is it's

London. It's clearly London, but it's not quite London because the clock strikes 13 and Big Brother is there on a poster. And, you know, and it's somewhere called Victory Square. We would never call anywhere Victory Square in our culture. We might call it Trafalgar Square, but Victory Square rings of some other kind of world. So it is London and it isn't London. And I think you started with this quotation, Tom. I think what's interesting that we're ending with 1984 in a way that it is the final hurrah of Orwell's career. It's his last great work, but in its themes, it's also the last great work. All the things he has defended and advanced and actually teased into existence, like our law and our language and our literature,

in our moral sense, in our trust in each other. He's saying, what happens when all those things go? Rob, you said earlier how much he loved history, how much he loved tradition. I mean, how important that was to him. And of course, you know, Room 101 shows you your deepest horror, your deepest nightmare. And in a sense, it's 1984. I mean, it's his Room 101. He's the idea of, you know,

because Winston Smith is rewriting the times. He's destroying the past. Is that the kind of the emotional core of the novel, do you think? He is facing his worst nightmare with that, the idea that the past can be lost like that. Absolutely. This is a revolutionary government. It's Ingsoc. I don't think for a minute Ingsoc was supposed to be Atlee's government, which he defends with a passion. I mean, he's not really interested in mainstream politics. He's not really interested in institutions. But he fights for Attlee right to the end,

and fair and foul, actually. This is about what revolutions do. Ingsoc is English socialism. It could be English fascism. It doesn't really matter. What happens if all the things history's given us, like say our law and our language, is reduced to nothing? Where are we then? He spent his life trying to listen to the people and the representations of the people. And now he finds a people so misrepresented by their law and their language and their history

that they're extinct. There is no people now. It's a massive warning. But there is that sense in 1984, to go back to the road to Wigan Pier, isn't there, that what I hope there is lies in the proles, that the ordinary people have preserved some, or could preserve some germ of Englishness that the middle classes or the bureaucrats, the people who are in hock to the party that they've lost and the hope resides in kind of the ordinary unsung. You see that in his essay, In the Lion and the Unicorn. You know, this, he has this almost mystical faith. In the Red Wall. Yeah, in the English, exactly, in the Red Wall,

in the English masses, doesn't he? Do you think that's there in 1984 as well? Yes, he does. I mean, he is a populist, I think, but he's also an artist. And what he tries to do is conjure a people worth believing in through his art. This is not completely removed from how they are. It's just his art brings them into power, into focus. They are the angel in the marble. He has the marble and the art makes them an angel. Now, we could argue about that forever. But if we live

in a democracy, after all, we have to represent somebody or something, which reminds me of the Brexit debates, which were pretty strong. I mean, what is Parliament representing other than itself? It must be the people. Who are the people? Well, you'll have to show me that. In Orwell's great contribution is he showed us the people as he saw them. And in 1984, he's saying what happens when all the things that make the people have been destroyed. What are you left with? Well, you're left with an old man in a pub who wants half a wallop

and a lot of people who really don't know where they are, except they're not in the elite. And that is where the hope lies. But it's not a great hope, Dominic. Because that's my memory. It's actually a hope that turns out not to be hope at all. And that ultimately, you know, it's what is it, the boot stamping on the forever is basically what you're left with. You know, there is no hope anywhere, which is, you know, a bit of a downer, really, when all is said and done.

Well, just one other thing. So obviously at this point, so that's published in June 1949, the Cold War, and Orwell is often credited with having coined that phrase in Tribune in the end of 1945, the Cold War is on in earnest. And one of the things that has always, Orwell is a sainted figure to lots of British writers, journalists, politicians, and so on. But there are critics. And one of the things that his critics always seize on is the fact that in the spring of 1949, so just before 1984 was published, Orwell had done this list for his friend Celia Kirwan

at the Information Research Department, which had been set up by the Labour government as a sort of anti-communist department, hadn't it? He has a list of 38 names, people like Michael Foote, Charlie Chaplin, E.H. Carr, J.B. Priestley. And he says, they're all dodgy. Don't get them to do any work. You know, you can't rely on them. They're all basically communists. And do you think, I mean, Rob, some people would say that's completely fine. And some people would say, oh, well, he's a hypocrite and he's doing the one thing. You know, he's informing on people and, you know, he's part of the thought police. Where do you stand on all that?

The first thing is he loves lists. He's always listing things. 38 things to do in the garden. 22 people who will go over to the Nazis should Germany invade. He's always drawing up his lists. This is an old girlfriend or somebody who wants to be a girlfriend who comes to see him when he's very sick. I mean, he's not far from dying. I think she comes months before he dies. Ask for information. Which people should the government not trust to write well about this country? I think that's a fair question. And I think Orwell thought it was a fair question. The hard part of

getting over this is that all through the war, he's hugely influenced by a guy called James Burnham, who your listeners might not have heard of, but he was a massive figure in the 1940s, where he argued about certain big societies like Russia and America and Europe converging into a similar kind of authoritarianism. But Burnham, after the war, said it's not about a number of societies converging, it's just a straight fight. It's a straight stand-up fight between democracy and communism. And you have to decide what side you're on. You have to decide. And Orwell was definitely convinced by that. He reviewed Burnham and he said he was right. Now is the moment in the Cold War to decide. Then in 1947, Truman introduces executive order, which screens

federal employees for what kind of politics they hold. This is all a precursor, of course, to the McCarthy trials that followed later. There is something about this list that tells us that Orwell went with Burnham's position, that such as the methods of duplicity, deceit, infiltration, fellow traveling, never coming clean about your true intentions, that it has to be revealed. And that's what he's doing in his list of 38 people to Celia Kirwan. The only problem with it is that it's not transparent. It's secret. And his whole point was, we've got to reveal the communists. We've got to show them for what they are. We've got to strip away their true allegiances, but we've got to do it in the open. And here he is doing it quietly. Having said that, he's in a sanatorium, he's seriously ill, and he's trying to do his bit in defence of a Labour government,

which he passionately supports. So you said he's ill, he's got tuberculosis. He dies, what, January 1950, is it? Yeah. He dies at a time where his reputation is growing and growing and growing. and as we said at the top of the program the word Orwellian comes to be one that everybody understands what it means it it it becomes an adjective to describe so much during the course of the cold war and indeed afterwards and just just to end this episode we've had a number of questions asking where Orwell might stand on issues today. So the question from Bert Cobain, if Orwell were in his 30s today, do you think he would volunteer for Ukraine to write and fight like he did in Spain? I mean, these are obviously very difficult questions. No right or

wrong answer to these. But just, I mean, it's an interesting question. People have said that Orwell would probably be off with a freedom brigade or something. Yeah. Thousands and thousands of people were going from Europe, as you know, Tom, to fight in Spain. I'm not sure that's happening now. I can't see him turning up as a loner with a size 12 boots on his shoulders in Kiev railway station. I can't for the life of me see that. But I think if there was a big movement, yeah, it's the kind of fight he'd like to be involved in. And actually, one of the prefaces he wrote for Animal Farm was directly addressed to Ukraine.

It was for Ukrainians. So he knew about Ukraine as a country caught between two power blocks, and he cared about it. Okay. So Hector, what would George Orwell say of contemporary corporate media like Twitter and Facebook and others? So that's another, that's, you know, the two-minute hate. That's, people often cite that as an example of what happens on social media. Do you think that's a fair comparison or? Well, he'd be very nervous about Twitter and Facebook and all that, but it's a very different game they're playing now. He called ideologues gramophones. They just repeated the same message that they'd been given. The way you can cut and paste and meld and shape messages now or memes and tropes, it's a vastly more complicated, difficult question than just being a gramophone. So he would have said something more interesting than I'm managing to say, but it wouldn't have been along the gramophone lines.

Okay. Here is a killer question. Adam Payne, if Orwell were an MP in the year 2022, in which party and where within that party would you find him? He'd never be an MP. He was never remotely interested. I think that's a fine, that's a reasonable answer. Wait a second. Here's the question that I know a lot of people want answered, because they ask it all the time. And Rob may try to wheedle his way out of answering it, but I'm keen to hear what he, because I know he'll have something, I know he'll think something interesting, even if he won't say it.

And that is, where would Orwell have stood on the great question of British political life in the last six years or so, which is obviously Brexit? Because he was invoked by both sides. And I'm curious about somebody who's written about Orwell and Englishness, where you think Orwell's heart, well, where would his heart and head have been, would you say? Well, I think he would have been pro-Brexit because in the end, he believed in sovereignty, democratic sovereignty. I think he would have taken one look at the Council of Europe or even the European Parliament in Strasbourg, all sitting in orderly rows looking at TV screens. And then he would have taken one look at the House of Commons, mad MPs running around waving order papers, swapping seats, shouting at each other. And I know he would have preferred the latter to the former.

It was the former, I think, the orderly rose watching television screens that gave him the shakes. Whereas a mad commons would he would have enjoyed the Hogarthian, traditional Wilksian overtones of that. Brexit, sure. There's one last question from Pseudo Dionysus, the Areopagite. Is there any other writer apart from Orwell so widely quoted by people who completely misunderstand the particular point he's making? Well, that's a really good question, but there's nobody quoted as much as Orwell. So it must be that sometimes they get him wrong and sometimes they get him right.

I'm just happy they're reading him and quoting him, long may it last. And to those people who want to, who've never read Orwell, and they're going to read one book, which is the one? Is it Animal Farm or is it 1984? Animal Farm is a perfect work of art. This is friend Herbert Reid said, it fits all around the head. Not one part of it is without meaning and you know your son and my grandsons and granddaughters young as they are they get it they understand what it's about it can't be bad i remember i i um i got given a copy of 1984 after i'd read animal farm as a child and i was so frightened of it that i hid it under the bed and I'd occasionally dare

myself to look at it. It took years and years for me to feel brave enough to read it. So he still has that kind of power. Well, he calls it a fairy story, Tom, but actually there's nothing fairy like about it. There are shocking moments. You know, when the dogs slaughter the um the dissidents just slaughter them it it's uh it's there's nothing childish or childlike about it but the funny thing is kids understand it they get it yeah yeah okay well that's been brilliant thanks so much good thank you i've really enjoyed it you guys can be my personal tutors now all right where's the sherry oh yeah where is it it's only a virtual sherry on this show i'm afraid it's boiled cabbage and victory cigarettes for us i'm afraid all right uh so thank you

for listening to the rest is history and uh we'll see you all next time bye bye bye Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hello and welcome to a very short Restless History special that I'm afraid is lacking Dominic, but has me, Tom Holland, and is supplemented by my beloved younger brother, James Holland, presenter of We Have Ways. And, bro, we are joining up, aren't we, to talk about a special offer that you have for our listeners so do you want to just tell them a little bit about it yes so we have got a festival based on the we have ways of making you talk podcast called we have ways fest i mean you can see how we derived it down to that one it's great marketing and it's brilliant it's genius and um i think the wonderful thing about the podcast is that obviously you've got your little club,

we've got our independent company, and there's sort of little communities. Crossover, isn't that? Synergy. Synergy and crossover. Synergy and crossover. And what we're trying to do is trying to get your guys to speak to our guys and vice versa. And anyway, we've got this festival coming up,

which is a weekend festival. And for those of you who might have been to the Chalk Valley History Festival, which you and I, bro bro are intricately uh involved with it's kind of on the same line so there's lots of talks and chats and discussions and on stages but there's also a little bit of living history and in our case there's also a huge amount of second world war hardware right right because bro let's just explain for those very few listeners of our podcast who may not have listened to yours that we have ways is very much devoted to the

second world war i mean pretty much exclusively devoted to the second world war so if you like the second world war this is for you it really is and if you want to know a little bit more about the biggies such as you know d-day and battle of britain or but also you go into the kind of much more recherche intimate detail would you go so far as to say that there's something for every taste i would go that far yeah i would say this is just a little bit for everybody if you're interested in human drama then our podcast is for you and if you're interested in our podcast then we have ways fest there's even more for you because you can meet your favorite historians not you know and i'm not saying me i'm saying a whole host of people

max hastings uh john mcmanus from the states a wonderful catcher hoyer who you know as well bro yes who did our episode on on um yes the second reich yeah the wonderful peter caddick adams who is back from the dead having had a quadruple heart bypass. He's now fine. With his extraordinary jackets. With his extraordinary jackets and cravats. We've got veterans. We've still got veterans. We've got Jack Mann, who was in the SAS and SBS in the desert. We've got the brilliant Phillips Payson O'Brien,

Gajendra Singh, Rob Lyman, Jonathan Fennell. We've got some Germans as well, and Austrians. Bernard Kast and Christoph Berg are coming over. Mark Milner from Canada. Some really, really brilliant people. People who are absolutely at the top of their game. People who know far more about the intricate details of various aspects of

Second War than I could ever possibly hope to know. So tell us when this festival is and how people can get tickets. So it's on the weekend of the 22nd to the 24th of July. You can get tickets yes so they can um so it's on the weekend of the 22nd to the 24th of july um you can get tickets on wehavewaysfest.co.uk so that's wehavewaysfest.co.uk um and it's up near silverstone racetrack and um so very easy to get to i've had a um a forward look into the weather forecast it looks absolutely stunning for that weekend um and it's going to be

a lot of fun and as you would expect from a any festival in the english countryside in the middle of summer of course there's lots of food there's lots of drink there's lots of other things to see and do um and a lovely convivial party atmosphere katrin himmler katrin himmler's coming as well who is the great niece of oh goodness well yeah and couldn't in sharp contrast her great uncle couldn't have been lovelier so well that sounds unmissable um and uh thank you for listening to this um i hope if you are interested in the second world war that this will be of interest to you um and let's face it who isn't interested in the second world war so bro just one last mention of

of where you can get the tickets and when it is, and then we will say goodbye. Yep, it's the 22nd to the 24th of July, Friday to the Sunday, and you can get tickets on wehavewaysfest.co.uk. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde and I'm Richard Osman and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment

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