Fifty Essays. George Orwell
ef="#ulink_90182374-9aad-5105-86d6-4b1fe40215ae">The Spike (1931)
Down the Mine (1937) (From "The Road to Wigan Pier")
North and South (1937) (From "The Road to Wigan Pier")
Spilling the Spanish Beans (1937)
Boys' Weeklies and Frank Richards's Reply (1940)
II
III
The Art of Donald McGill (1941)
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (1941)
Part I: England Your England
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
vi.
Part II: Shopkeepers at War
i.
ii.
iii.
Part III: The English Revolution
i.
ii.
iii.
Wells, Hitler and the World State (1941)
Looking Back on the Spanish War (1942)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Rudyard Kipling (1942)
Mark Twain—The Licensed Jester (1943)
Poetry and the Microphone (1943)
W B Yeats (1943)
Arthur Koestler (1944)
Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali (1944)
Raffles and Miss Blandish (1944)
Antisemitism in Britain (1945)
Freedom of the Park (1945)
Future of a Ruined Germany (1945)
Good Bad Books (1945)
In Defence Of P. G. Wodehouse (1945)
Nonsense Poetry (1945)
Notes on Nationalism (1945)
Revenge is Sour (1945)
The Sporting Spirit (1945)
You and the Atomic Bomb (1945)
A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray (1946)
A Nice Cup of Tea (1946)
Books vs. Cigarettes (1946)
Confessions of a Book Reviewer (1946)
Decline of the English Murder (1946)
How the Poor Die (1946)
James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution (1946)
Pleasure Spots (1946)
Politics and the English Language (1946)
Politics vs. Literature: an Examination of Gulliver's Travels (1946)
Riding Down from Bangor (1946)
Some Thoughts on the Common Toad (1946)
The Prevention of Literature (1946)
Why I Write (1946)
Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool (1947)
Such, Such were the Joys (1947)
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
Writers and Leviathan (1948)
Reflections on Gandhi (1949)
Footnotes
The Spike (1931)
It was late-afternoon. Forty-nine of us, forty-eight men and one woman, lay on the green waiting for the spike to open. We were too tired to talk much. We just sprawled about exhaustedly, with home-made cigarettes sticking out of our scrubby faces. Overhead the chestnut branches were covered with blossom, and beyond that great woolly clouds floated almost motionless in a clear sky. Littered on the grass, we seemed dingy, urban riff-raff. We defiled the scene, like sardine-tins and paper bags on the seashore.
What talk there was ran on the Tramp Major of this spike. He was a devil, everyone agreed, a tartar, a tyrant, a bawling, blasphemous, uncharitable dog. You couldn't call your soul your own when he was about, and many a tramp had he kicked out in the middle of the night for giving a back answer. When You, came to be searched, he fair held you upside down and shook you. If you were caught with tobacco there was bell to. Pay, and if you went in with money (which is against the law) God help you.
I had eightpence on me. 'For the love of Christ, mate,' the old hands advised me, 'don't you