The Real George Orwell Down and Out in London

In my previous piece of writing on the Real George Orwell, Eric Blair, BBC 4 Radio production he had returned to England on official holiday leave from his position as a police officer for the Colonial Service in Burma and to recover from a bout of tropical fever at the home of his parents. During a holiday in Cornwall he came to the decision to resign without knowing what his  next income would be. He was 24 years of age. He wanted to  become a professional writer.

As I also wrote there are sufficient connections and coincident to confirm my contention of the repetitive and cyclical nature of experience between individuals and generations

At the age of 20 after fours years working in local government in central London and  Croydon I decided to test my increasing confidence and wish to better myself  and became a office equipment salesman for the Italian firm Olivetti attending a month‘s sales course  at their headquarters in Barclay Square and finishing top out of about 40 others, some of whom did not survive the weekly examination and appraisal. In the first month I achieved over 30 placements of the latest machine on a trial based and was unable to sell one because those using did not like the soft, spongy touch. The new design was a disaster and I quickly lost heart as door after door was shut in my face and only having a limited number of small offices to visit in a concentrated areas in the City of London around Bishopsgate, as the weather changed, I found myself spending more and more time travelling around the circle line of the underground sitting in park, pubs and coffee houses, a  journey which took around 53 to 55 minutes.

For the cost of three old pence ticket, the minimum fare you could spend all day travelling around and around if you wished and it was interesting to note other fellow travellers in the compartment of choice, mostly salesmen killing time or writing up their sales and notes, but also the elderly keeping warm and school children playing truant. There was the occasional tramp although I do not remember seeing many,

I resigned much to the horror of the management without having another job to do. I quickly became dependent on my family but after a couple of months I obtained a temporary job at Housemans Bookshop  close to Kings Cross Station and from the same building the Pacifist weekly Peace News was also published.

While Blair was helping to control the Empire at the same age I had become an activist for the Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War  helping to organise the Scottish end of the London to Holy Loch march and  demonstration against the location of the USA controlled Polaris Submarines at Holy Loch, and a short time member of the Committee 100 set up by Bertrand Russell, electing to serve six months in prison rather than give an undertaking to stop such activities. I resigned  from the committee after Russell rejected my warnings about the conduct of his assistant and which makes nonsense of subsequent 8 page “I was misled” tirade against the man published as an appendix in the official work on his life by Ronald W Clark.  I had  some limited experience of being on the road and once spent a night frozen in a bus shelter in a town in Derbyshire on my way to Liverpool to join a march between Liverpool and Hull. I will refer against to the experience of walking 12 to 20 a miles a day in all-weather, on little food, dependent on the hospitality of others and  usually sleeping on the floor of some  hall in a sleeping bag.

On his return Eric Blair consulted a Cambridge Don about becoming a writer, attended an Eton College reunion dinner and in the Autumn he moved to London acquiring a flat in the Portobello Road. During the five years he commenced to investigate the lives of the poor, in and out of work in London and Paris  publishing an essay The Spike, moving to Paris until 1928, and turning his experiences into an autobiographical novel Down and out in Paris and London some after. His first published work was completed. His mother’s sister lived in Paris and provide him with social and financial support to enable him to write the first version of Burmese Days although the  issue of what is what is was like to be poor without prospects obsessing him as a subject for writing.

Like myself although he was poor, without a job or a home of his own, he was not isolated without relatives and others who he could fall back on and lend support, including financial support and therefore unlike the majority of the rest who were poor without support unless provide by the state or charities, and more significantly without prospects. I will come back to this issue as does Blair several times in his work.

In 1929 Blair became ill and was admitted to a hospital leading to an essay How the poor die (1946). You want to write the experiences you have but you need time, perspective and a  measure of objectivity and then from a publishing viewpoint there is the problem about writing about contemporary others without their expressed permission or whose activity in question  has been made public by them or is already in the public domain, although even in this respect there are appropriate restrictions where it is wise to follow if one dos not wants to find oneself in the civil and sometimes criminal courts as an accused. Blair and his publishers appears to have adopted her device of converting experiences into fiction with Homage to Catalonia the exception.

In Paris when his money was stolen  from a lodging house where he was staying Blair took a job as a dish washer in in fashionable hotel. Later, as the end of the year approached he returned to the comfortable existence of life with his parents who  settled at Southwold and where he remained for the following five years 26 to 31.

After I commenced the life as direct actionist (Marx on Fuerbach’s 11th Theses point) I worked occasionally as a temp in a left wing coffee bar meeting place in Soho and where the manager offered a permanent  job  in part to dissuade me from the course I had set on to go to prison. I was also elected to the executive of my local Labour Party which then sponsored me to Ruskin College Oxford, where after studying a year for a Politics and Economics diploma I was able to switch to a post graduate University Diploma in Public and Social Administration where the other students were first and second class honours graduates in other subjects, my tutorial partner for Criminology had gained a First in Theology which set the gold standard for analytical reproduction of the academic work others in the form the essay. I had three articles published in the university weekly Isis, joined several Oxford Societies and was appointed to a Labour Club Committee to campaign fort eh labour party to keep the UK out of a non socialist European Economic Community. Then de Gaulle said Non. Thus via the back door I had two amazing years in he City the Oxford and its University life experience, return to live and work there for three after a year in Birmingham. Eat your heart out Eric.

I went to Birmingham University for the embryonic new Certificate of Qualification in Social Work, specialising in Child Care which was gained, together with a Home Office  Certificate of professional competence and then joined Oxfordshire  Council, as a child care officer arriving on the day when its head became leader of the Association of Children’s Officers. Because of her role I read and summarised Hanzard in relation to child and family social work which developed into a subscription magazine which I produced with around 35 issues a year for a three year period, publishing other articles in addition to becoming the Parliamentary officer and then Vice President of the professional Association followed by becoming the first chairman of one of the new sections of the British Association of Social Workers. I had developed a clear vision of what I wanted to do and be. And also I knew where I stood politically, a socialist, but passionate anti communist where the writing of Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm) and others helped to confirm from my limited contact with members of the party and the Trots, their actual approach to political issue in the UK and the realities of life in the Soviet dictatorships, as I once tried to explain to Sir Keith Joseph when an official dinner guest.  I had also written a play which although rejected by the English Stage company they asked to see my other work which at the time I had not created, and I was then set on a  different course.

The second week of the BBC Book at Bedtime in the Real George Orwell series commenced with his travelling to London which surprised me because I was under the impression the was at least one further episode on his experiences in Paris. Undertaking catch up reading after the Monday night episode February 3rd, 2012 I appreciated what had happened,

The decision had been taken to omit his experience of leaving the hotel and working in the restaurant with Boris run by another Russian. They had only taken the job at the hotel because the restaurant was not ready to employ them so when Boris gets the call that it is about to open, Blair feels obliged to hand in his notice although he had become settled in the employment. I say Blair although this work was published as a novel and it  is not surprising that his first attempts to publish were rejected. While he did work as a kitchen hand in a hotel I cannot confirm that he worked in the kitchen of any restaurant and therefore his description of the Russian owned one may have been based on hearsay.

In the story he explains how having given up the hotel job, Boris and the two waiters employed found that the premises were in the same condition as when they had  started at the hotel. The owner did not have the funds to hire labour to finish the job and therefore adopted the ruse of getting the waiters, dependent on any money as tips for getting the job done. Because he was the plongeur without tips he was paid a wage but the owner only gave him  part of what he was due and because, but  did give a glass of brandy when he left for home.  He describes that when the restaurant opened he worked 17 to 19  hours days sometimes sleeping on the trampled food on floors too tired to make his way to his lodgings. In the book he claims that he was so fed up with the life that he approached a contact in London for work and he returning to London on the promise of being a companion to a mentally disabled young man in a family, but who he finds had gone abroad for a month hence his need to find the cheapest of lodgings and then to become a tramp dependent on charities providing at and bread during the day and the workhouse  spikes  for bed and breakfast. As I have noted in fact his experiences were the other way round, investigating the life of the poor living in cheap lodging houses and then going on the Spike and then going to Paris and then going home to become a professional writer.

On the journey to Tilbury he tried to persuade a Rumanian couple that England was a paradise of art, culture architectural good design compared to Paris. He then finds his would be employment was on hold for a month and only a few shillings  and six pence to survive so he determines to find the cheapest of lodging houses leaving the rest of his possession at a railway station.

He also attempted to pawn his clothing for inferior stuff  but this only yielded one shilling, mentioning four pawn shop experiences. He then sees a tramp coming towards him and realises it is his reflection in a  shop window. I have previously commented on the difference in how you are treated if you wear a suit collar and tie or casual clothes, especially once past the age of 65. Blair also comments on the disparity between accent and  clothes and  towards the end of the book comments how a tramp manager at a Spike treated him  favourably because  his accent revealed him to be a gentleman on hard times. I suppose I ought to explain, although out of sequence that the Spike is the food and board for the night available at  workhouse casual wards for those on the road who were not pauper inmates,

His first experience of a lodging house brought him the experience of a 15 feet square room with  eight beds and later at a spike there would be eighty. I have experience of sleeping in a room with a score of others (at an open prison camp, former RAF station and again at the Iona Community House in Sauchiehall Street although for the most  part all the other beds were vacant during this stay in Glasgow while helping to arrange the Polaris Protest at Holy Loch.  And then of course I did spend the first ten years of my life after babyhood sharing one double bed with three adult women two at one end and me and my care mother at the other.

Blair complains that the beds in lodging house were hard as board and the pillows blocks of wood, so you should try sleeping on floors in just a sleeping bag my spiritual friend? It is during this experience he begins the diet of bread with marge and large cups if tea. His money lasts for three days and four nights.

He begins to learn about the comradeship that develops between those in like circumstances spend whatever comes their way and share what they have although there is also a lot of stealing from those in similar circumstance who fail to share. He finds that many of the men are 10 shillings a week pensioners and their ongoing survival Blair found  inspiring. One of my aunts, abandoned by her bigamist husband eventually got a 5 shillings a week widow’s pension and relied exclusively on my birth mother’s earning as a teacher for her survival.

Blair was then driven to use the Spike and to his horror found that the rule was you could not stay for more than one night in 30 days in the same place, but you could stay at two different places in London. This meant the hundreds if not thousands of men on the road were constantly walking in all weathers a dozen or more miles a day which was wasted energy to no social purpose and caused harm to the men in question, given they walked on a starvation diet. I have participated in  two walkings of over 100 miles from Liverpool to Hull taking about ten days and a number of shorter walkings Aldermaston to London and London to Bedford over four to five days. In all these instances any baggage including sleeping bags was transported from morning sleep over on a floor, with only one instance a bed provide by a college lecturer at Hull. As with the tramps one therefore was able to walk freely but in Wintry  conditions with the two main walks immediate after Christmas through to the New Year. Blistering feet rather than the absence of food was the problem although unlike the tramps there was  more than bread and tea provided and the  fundamental difference being that we walked with a purpose.

While they would be seen by a doctor this was  to ensure they did have some potentially lethal contagion which could be passed onto the general community. You were not allowed in if you had 8 pence in possession and what you had you were required to hand in including any tobacco but this you smuggled in your socks as although you were searched they rarely got below the knee while others had made secret pockets in their coats,

The evening meal was a half pound  loaf of bread and a mug of cocoa. You left with a 6pence open voucher for some food and a hot drink and were told where they could be exchanged on the next journey selected.

He also learned of the existence of places, usually provided by religions groups which  offered tea and a  bun on the condition you accepted half an hour of prayers and contemplation. Many of those he encountered came from the north who had  lost jobs, a few were mentally challenged,

He makes one friend, from Ireland who lost his job and failed to get another. Learned from the art of turning cigarettes stubs into smokes with London of course the Big Smoke, but also the man‘s reluctance to steal milk   left on the front steps.

It was in episode eight that Blair refers to the hatred which has almost become universal that Englishmen and women, in the UK have for those who come and work from another country, the Scots, the Irish, The Jews, the Blacks, the Indians, the Muslims etc, in fact blame the bloody foreigner nor unemployment and lack of  housing. The odd man who works, the young man who is not at home or a student and everyone who sponges off the state, Sounds familiar?  While Blair dislikes this he dislikes  the Salvation Army of their military approach to the charity they provided.

They could get into the Sally Army hostel at six if they possessed the means to buy a cup of tea each otherwise they had to wait with the rest of the 200 until 8. You went to bed at 10 with two officers making sure there was no smoking and no noise with gambling forbidden during the time before bed and lights out.

Having enough of this experience he goes back to his contact for £1 and gets £2 which takes him and the Irishman into lodgings once more, He also learns about screevers or the pavement artist, now long gone and replaced by those who paint themselves into statues. He tells of one who had studied art in Paris and discovered that if his wife took in sewing they and his six children could survive on the £1 a week average net profit he earned from  drawing the likeness of Churchill and other known figures, although his Botticelli nude had caused reaction from one London church and the police. He explains the hierarchy of beggars and begging scams notably the street photographer

While there is reference to drink being the cause of getting some men onto the street, and tobacco their drug,  there is no mention of other drug substances, or to difficulties after prison, or served in the armed forces. He rarely came across a woman and one fellow traveller was interested in prostitutes as he regarded  all other women out of his league, but in fact the overwhelming number of men remained celibate because of their life style and the effect their appearance had on other women, unless they were religious do gooders.

He also learns something of the rhyming slang, some of which he said was out of fashion although was still being used during my childhood social circle in the 1940’s. He also discovers the use of f,,,k and f,,,king as a swear word although in my 1960’s edition  there are simply  ----. One of the great moments of my Scottish experience in 1961 was getting on a bus full of shift ending factory girls where the coarseness of their comments towards and about me as well as in genera took my breathe away.

Blair then argues that Tramps and fellow dossers are not a different race from the rest of humanity although they are treated as such, but are men who have fallen on hard times and find it difficult to impossible to break back out or in depending on ones perspective. He ends the book with, the device that he is able to survive the days left before his prospective employer arrives back from going abroad and a plea for a more rational approach to treating the poor. All this was before the creation of  the welfare  state and where now the present Coalition, in part from good intentions and commenced to unravel the principal of universality with underpinned the Beveridge Reforms and Welfare system. We are going back an era to soup kitchens and means testing, begging officialdom rather than on the street. As a say everything is cyclical and generational. We never learn.

The Real George Orwell's Burmese Days

The BBC Radio Four has selected several works of George Orwell to celebrate the holding of a national day to mark his life under the title The Real George Orwell. Eric Blair has given us several cultural masterpieces with Animal Farm and 1984 and which together with Huxley’s Brave New World, say all there is to say about revolutions and the development of totalitarian states under dictatorships. More than this he wrote a number of semi autobiographical works and essays which provide us with an understanding of his development as a writer and indeed as a human being.

He tried to explain his reasons for being a writer in an essay (Why I write) in which he covered something of his childhood in which he felt isolated and undervalued and he discovered that he no only had a facility with words but was able to face unpleasant facts. He also admits to be a day dreamer and putting himself into situations, points which I shall come again when considering the BBC production Burmese Days in which the a different perspective and motivation is suggested. He also lists  what he believes are his objective motives for being a writer at a time when he was an established writer and which I shall comment on in a separate  writing

I do not know enough about his life to claim a great understanding of the man or the process by which he evolved but the BBC series has provide some key issues  and turning points which I assume are factually based.

I have also noted some interesting  parallels and points of connection between us especially the sense of isolation in childhood,  the sudden wish to break out from the pattern of life that had been set out for him through his education and father’s work and the hope that his personal experiences would also contribute to the enlightenment of other on their separate journeys of self discovery and understanding of the earth world and its place in the universe.

I have yet to find out why birth registered as Eric Blair  chose to write as George Orwell. In my instance the selection of Joseph Grech for my identity as a contemporary artist and writer became clear to me four years after the discovery at the age of 59 that the surname of my father was Grech, ‘of the Greeks’ and that Joseph my second name was the name of the parish church where he served as a priest for fifty years and where my mother and her family of six sisters and four brothers had commenced their education at the school attached to church where they had lived next door for a time, and where she had taught as a pupil teacher and later had played the piano and organ for school and church with other members of the family in the church choir. On my second visit to Gibraltar in 2004 and I stood at the top of the rock looking down not just on the rest of this small community but on the life, and the identity I should have had and wanted throughout my self aware consciousness till then, and vowed that for whatever years I had left they would be spent within the apparel of who I should have been although I also accepted what I had been  and that I was as I had become.

Eric Arthur Blair was born into a very different world a few years before that of my birth and care mothers in 1903  (1907 and 1909 respectively) before the outbreak of World War I which changed the future of everyone so dramatically heralding the technological age of warfare and culture. One cannot underestimate the difference   perspective between those who were brought up  and reached adulthood before World War II and those whose childhoods were spent getting in and out of arid raid shelters, watching the rocket bombs pass over head and hen looking at the craters where there had once been homes.
Eric was born in India where his father worked for Colonial Office with responsibilities related to the manufacture and distribution of opium. His mother of French background was brought up in Burma and shortly after his birth his mother brought him and  older sister by five years to England, to Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire. My mother left Gibraltar because of her pregnancy although five of her sisters were required to leave Gibraltar along with some ten thousand other citizens because of the declaration of one and the information that Germany was to take Gibraltar and had to neutral but fascists friendly Spain when the Germany defeated Britain and her colonial empire of territories, colonies and dominions. Gibraltar remains a disputed  independent territory to this day.

I also have two connections with Henley on Thames in that of a year I made the fifty mile return three to four time a week late afternoon into evening to supervised a number of teenage boys for a colleague away in training in addition to the average 50 mile round trip a day work on my existing caseload of child care cases  of children in care, fostering and adoptions as well as being the Court officer for the County Council at Witney and Burford where the benches were respectively chaired by the wife in law and son of the Duke of Marlborough. Later Henley was also the location of a month spent at an International Senior Management course which was to affect  my life in a positive way.

Our first five years appear very different for although without his father apart from a brief visit which led to the birth of his younger sister, he grew up in a comfortable and socially involved environment compared to the deprivations of World War II time and the need for my existence to be kept secret so that all official documentation was removed or never existed in that I was not registered  with a National health doctor until the family GP retired and the war was long over. My earliest memories are of seeing overhead flying V 1 rockets on the way to the garden shelter and looking at bomb craters subsequently  at a time when financial poverty and food rationing limited the family tables and the war time restrictions limited discovery of the surrounding world although I was evacuated to officers married quarters at Catterick for a year missing most of the 140 rockets which fell on the neighbourhood, the biggest concentration in the UK because of our proximity to London’s main airport at Croydon.

Eric then had a female childhood friend and they read and recited poetry together, and while I played cricket with a first cousin after the war there were no books in he household despite my mother being a primary school teacher. My cultural world opened up when we attended the local cinema on Mondays and Thursday, I went to the Saturday morning children’s shows and occasionally saw a fourth cinema programme in a week  going to see the latest releases with first cousins in neighbouring towns, Croydon, Sutton and Purley and only later did I discover the world  of the library when I found I was able to move from  the children’s to the adult sections without questions.

The first point of similarity is that we both went to Catholic preparatory schools where the teachers were nuns although Eric was  also became a boarder at another Preparatory school, St Cyprian’s in  Eastbourne. He was able to gain scholarships to Wellington and hen when a place became available at Eton the most famous of British private schools where as although the John Fisher wanted to be recognised as a Public School, employing an international Olympic Athletics Coach, it never made it. In both instances we were dependent on having additional support for the required fees.

It was our respective years 18 to 21 which were so different in outward appearance yet we both gained experiences which were to govern the rest of our lives and make us individualist, slightly anarchistic socialists. As he approached his eighteenth year and University was considered the normal; next step he was  unable to gained the scholarship and fees to attend a top class college considered the norm for Eton students and joining the Indian Police service, in Borneo because his mother’s family resided there and his father had returned to England and retirement. Eton was then an establishment geared up to providing young men to help rule the empire so his appointment was a natural progression.

In my instance I had panicked on first discovering my problem which short term memory learning so that despite hours of home work and continuous reading during he holiday  I could not remember stuff when it came to examinations and given the mock general certificate of education results had opted out of Latin essential then for Oxbridge and then  decided to seek employment  without going into the sixth form and gained work in the Finance Department of Middlesex and then Croydon Councils before failing as Olivetti sales representatives and becoming Down and Out and becoming a leading activist in the non violent direct action movement against weapons of mass destruction and an executive committee member of the local Labour party and choosing to go to prison for six months  rather than agree to stop my activities. Eric went to Burma and his account of the experience was broadcast by the BBC as part of its celebration of his work.

The first of the biographical programmes was Burmese Days and which I presumed was based on an autobiographical work. It begins with his disappointment that the female friend from his childhood (Jacintha Buddicom) was not interested in marriage and going to Burma to become with wife of a Colonial Policeman.

Jacintha Laura May Buddicom (10 May 1901 – 1994) was a poet and a childhood friend of George Orwell (Eric Blair). They first met  in the summer of 1914 when he was standing on his head in a field at the bottom of their garden in Ship lake (Oxfordshire) south of Henley where the two families lived. One or both appear to have recorded that when she asked what he was doing he replied “You are "You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are the right way up." The radio programme makes references to this moment when it covers their experience of growing up writing and reading together, although the relationship included his younger sister and her younger brother and sister.

Her main complaint stated in the programme is that she still had the intention to go to Oxford which he had now abandoned, maintain and develop her intellectual interests and write. When he persists she ridicules the notion  going to Burma and playing eh role of a colonial wife to a policeman and attempts to force her to yield to him physically, something which she implies they willingly attempted before and it failed because they were more like brother and sister than potential lovers.

The programme also records, in a conversation Blair is said to have had  with a stranger on his way to the frontier out post of Katha after  an incident with an elephant which I will come  to shortly, that he continued to write to her after his arrival in Burma  but she did not reply because he says his letters were full of complaints about the life he had found for himself. The programme gives he impression that this was the end of their contact.

My understanding is that on his return from Burma and staying he visited the Buddicomes but Jacintha was not  there because she was away after having a child (1927) from a  relationship. She then had a relationship with an unnamed peer for 30 years and  one source claims that she did not realise that that her childhood friend was George Orwell until shortly before his death but they did corresponded, telephoned and planned to meet. She attended his funeral (unnoticed) in 1950.

She wrote a book about their childhood together Eric and us in which she challenges the portrait he has left of his experience during the same years. She left the copyright of her book and papers to a relative who in 2006 published an updated version of the book which included the information that the reason why she  had not replied to his letters was that he had attempted to rape her.

The main part of the BBC programme covers two situations  during his  years in Burma. He was called to act in a situation where an elephant had run amok and flattened  and killing a man  as well as destroying building. He was under great pressure to  shoot the animal from his white subordinate and his local police contact although he is reported as reluctant but agrees to do so when he told to do otherwise would involve a loss of face before the increasingly large crowd when the elephant is cornered and quietened down. He has to send for a larger gun and although the first shot stops and then drops the creature he has to fire several rounds from two weapons before the  animal dies after half an hour although before this the locals have begun to cut up the  creature for its meat. He expresses considerable regret noting that for decades the creature had served men and did not deserve to be treated in this way.   He is then summoned to see his chief to says a complain has been made by the firm who owned the elephant demands that action is taken against he officer and this the reason for his being sent to the backwoods, effectively ending  his career.

It is on his way to the posting that he meets a philosophical teacher of the  locals. They meet when Eric enters the compartment after having a physical confrontation with some local young men who are angry with the continuing presence of white colonials in their country, he loses his temper and beats the most vociferous. He expresses shame at having behaved in this way although as he a admits he has beaten native prisoners as part of his official duties.

He explains his dislike for the country and his role and that his life blood is reading novels which are sent out, His reading distinguishes himself from his colleagues who read for entertainment and passing the time while his is more discerning and critical. The companion is clearly a communist who sympathises with Blair’s apparent distrust of the locals but which the Scotsman from Aberdeen pointedly explains the consequential reaction to colonialism and the exploitation of the mineral and occupational wealth of the country for the City of London. This is something which his boss had also explained was the purpose of their presence to protect the commercial interests of the empire. The teacher was employed in native education and expressed surprise that the people appeared to accept  their exploitation for the profits of a few without rising up. He explains that his father had a job with the port authority which required him to ask the masters their  port of destination and this has fuelled his desire to visit the places for himself.

Blair puts the blame for his presence on his father and the rejection of his suit by Cynthia who cried when he when he went shooting but did not respond to his advances. He said he did not understand women. The stranger suggests he will have made do with a native woman, who cooks and cleans and does not answer back. Blair reacts to this accusation, but in the programme he also does not deny. Blair sounds self piteous and questions the purpose of existence, cogs in the wheels of evolution. The stranger challenges this concept and tells him to go outside his experience of education and society of his peers and find out how the rest of world live and tells him to read the 11th Theses ( of Karl Marx) although they part without stranger explaining what it is in anyway.

The programme then includes experiences from being Down and Out in London and the  in Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia and where he asks a Communist does he know what is the 11th theses and who explains this where Marx argued against the Philosopher Feuerbach. This was written in 1845 but not published until 1924  the main point the 11th in this short work is his conclusion that philosophers attempt to describe the world as it from different perspective  but not to change it  The stranger was telling Orwell he needed to act and not just think and  talk about it. Orwell was already conscious of this because previously he talks of the need to feel and be in reality to feel alive rather than existing. I also felt like that then and  look at trouble it got be into! And for Orwell he needed to take a very different pathway (Theses on Feuerbach by Karl Marx Google it)

My understanding is that Blair was trained at Mandalay in 1922 after travelling via the Suez canal and that after a period at the principal hill station was posted to the frontier outpost in 1924. He was responsible for the security of two hundred thousand people and from there he became an Assistant Division Inspector to a town  with an oil refinery close to Rangoon. In 1925 he moved again to a town with the second largest prison and then in 1926 to where his maternal grandmother lived and it was towards the end of that year he was assigned to Katha the location of his first novel Burmese Days. In 1927 he developed a fever and because he was entitled to leave in England (after five years) and returned to his family to recover  and while on holiday with them decided to change his life and resigned  from the police. It was while on in France swimming naked the pool villa while the rest of the family were out and I spent the day eating crusty French bread, olives and salami drinking wine looking down the valley in 1991 that I reappraised my life and determined to write the novel that  had fermented inside me for the previous thirty years. It was written in 1994 and I keep rewriting the opening chapter from year  to year or two. It is set

The  novel Burmese Days was not published until 1934 and  according to once source it is a portrait of Imperial Britain although Orwell attempts to present a wide  perspective from the naked exploitation and commercialism to the provision of health and education, and order and security. The widespread racism of predominantly white Britain is reflected not surprising given the country that produced the biggest slavers in the Caribbean and the USA and the superiority of the white races over others but also those who rejected such prejudices or were indifferent to the issue. The others issue was identity and its collapse of the basis on which the central character had built his life. It is not  a book preaching revolution or major change, or promoting  socialist or communist ideas. I have not placed the book on my reading list. I still do not know why he  commenced to break in such a fundamental way from the belief system created for him by his family, education and social structure and which would lead him to abandon his attractive young wife to kill fascists.

Down and out in Paris

I was delighted to come across a BBC radio production of George Orwell’s Animal Farm last week and quickly discovered that the programme is part of a new series The Real Gorge Orwell. He was Eric Blair in fact and I will write more later about him, his wife who came from South Shields, Animal Farm, Homage to Catalonia, part one which is being repeated today with the second part on Sunday afternoon, a discussion of his short story Politics and Language and Burma, a biographical play. 1984 is to close the season plus other programmes and I have found a site where all his works are available to read.

It is fitting that the BBC has chosen Down and Out in Paris and London as  his work to abridge in ten episodes for the book at bedtime this week and next, given that more people have become down and out or become greater strugglers wage slaves in the UK during the past two years because of the policy of the coalition just as the situation in the UK and the USA in the 1920’s when on his return from a colonial policeman in Burma he decided to explore life on the streets and the poverty of being a wage slave to survive first in London and then in Paris while reporting as a journalist and wanting to become a professional writer.

In the Guardian on Thursday 24th January 2012, the new George Orwell day, Stewart Jeffries asks what would Orwell make of the state affairs in 2013? What  would he be writing about and on what would his reputation be founded? His article disappoints although I agree  with the conclusion that he would certainly have written a 1984 to which I would have added Animal Farm given his views the Russians and the Germans through Communism and  Fascism created totalitarian societies and how much greater knowledge of this reality of political speak he would have gained had he lived after 1950 when he died at the age of 46.

 Anthony Powell The right wing writer whose books I possess and admire ( and want to reread again) argued in his journals that he anticipated that Orwell as he aged would have become right wing, anti CND, in favour of the Falklands War, and against the miners strikes to which I must say perhaps in terms of the specifics,  because his  writings always suggested the individualist, the liberal democratic socialist at heart, and a man who liked  good order but hated injustice and waste. Whether he would have earned a living writing about food, another suggestion, is more  questionable although he would  have campaign about food waste and its misrepresentation  for commercial reasons. Would he approve of reality TV programmes? For this piece I will review the first week of  Being down ( but I suggest not out) in Paris, listening to the radio broadcasts while I reread my copy of the book purchased three shillings and sixpence in in 1964 while I was the University of Birmingham, Penguin books edition  reprinted in 1963.

I was disappointed with the first abridgement on Monday evening January 29th 2013, because of the omission of the whole of the second chapter. In 1927 Orwell undertook the experience of being a tramp on the streets of London and experience which other journalists and social commentators have undergone since and then he went to Paris in 1928 to  have the same experience again and the book begins with surviving on six francs a day in a bug ridden lodging house.  In fairness to the BBC the second chapter is not essential to make the point  of what it is like to survive just on bread while seeing  the piles of food in shops, the food left on plates in  restaurants or dumped in trash cans.  However part of the purpose of his writing is not just to describe his experience but report on the condition and behaviour of others and in this respect the tale of Charlie is relevant and could have been summarised in a few words saying Charlie boasted of how he stole 1000 francs from his brother and the blew the lot on raping a girl kept as a slave by an old hag in a cellar.

The episode highlights one aspect of being poor without expectation of a permanent change in circumstances, the tendency to blow what ever comes ones way without regard to  tomorrow, in this instance 1000 francs on a brief sexual encounter and while Orwell is surviving on six. It is the poor who tend to gamble and smoke more on a regular basis often at the expense of food, shelter and new clothes; and thirdly that sexual slavery is nothing new. The omission smacks of censorship although it may be typical of the Book at Bedtime abridgements although I also mention in the context that the original Animal Farm film now available as a U certificate was graded X for over 18 year olds only when first released to theatres.

It is an abridgement series but in this instance missing out on some fo the characters not only reduces the colour of the piece but also reveals that it is no accident why many of  the characters are poor,  the inadequate, or immoral beings, prone to prone to petty criminality and in some instance violence and therefore should be no surprise that they are where they are. What percentage  continues to be a matter for debate, a significant minority from my experience but something which does not affect any analysis and sense of injustice at the extremes between the poor and the wealthy.

The edited radio programme does communicate the reality of being down and out with the author ending the third chapter explaining the consolation in poverty, that is the feeling of relief, almost of pleasure that at last you have reached the lowest you can get of being genuinely down and out.” You have talked  so often of going to the dogs- and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.”

The second radio abbreviation covered the next four chapters to almost the end of seven(page 39) and  concerned his relationship with a Russian waiter called Boris who worked at a hotel and boasted of earning  100 francs a day in tips and hoped to save up for his own restaurant, something which all waiters dreamed of doing. Boris said he could get Blair, for Eric Blair is the actual birth name of the writer, a job if he wanted one. Then as the teaching English job ended and he was down to his last francs he went in search of the Russian, Boris, only to find that the man was in a worse position than himself living in a flea and bug invested slum, the room of someone who owed him  money, and where he had been sleeping rough under bridges have lost his job after an accident and breaking his back and still recovering he  was described as lame. He had hopes however about a Russian Restaurant that is opening  the following week but when they visit it is still being  created.

We learn a lot about Boris during  the  four chapters, of a wealthy family shot in the revolution and himself a Riffleman, a  Captain, his father had been a Colonel.  He had been with many women, to whom he writes to appeal for funds none of whom reply except who owed him  money but the letter was an excuse for giving nothing to him. He also had a love of chess as many Russians do,  and he was prejudiced against Jews, something which the BBC abridged out and which in fairness many Russians had at the time and still do.

We  also learn about  the pawn broking system in which you take in goods and receive a number and when the clerk has assessed he will call your number and make you an offer so that all  waiting will hear how  little or  how you   will get, and indeed if you are not offered anything. If you contest the offer, it may be withdrawn or you are offered less but if you go after lunch when the clerks have  eaten you are likely to get a better offer than in the morning when they have not.

It is also evident that if you want a job as a waiter you have to know the right person to bribe and Orwell describes how they bought a drink at the right place and waited for the permitted two hours without being introduced to someone calling for an employee because they had not realised  it was necessary to give the barman 20 francs. Their problem was that the Russian now with a limp was almost unemployable and of course Orwell had no experience and would  only get a job washing up in a kitchen for example on the say so of the Russian who had the experience. He manages to survive for one month when he receives 200 francs for some published work and then expecting only 5 or 10 francs for their winter coast they are given seventy from the pawn broker, probably a mistake, but they then  buy lots of food and drink, forge themselves and get drunk which seems to me the standards for those in this predicament.

The next part of the book better covered in the third abridgement describes what it is like working in a  hotel kitchen as a general dogsbody a plongeur. Boris gets a job as a waiter and smuggles out food over the first three days fo his employment until he gets Orwell the job. Before then in  the book there is the story of the Russian Duke who eat at the hotels and restaurants where he knew Russian officers were working as waiters and then borrowed 300 francs to pay for the food and  to survive which he never paid back or was expected as he was a Duke.

They then fall to a confidence trickster who pretends to run  a communist underground group above a laundry and demands 20 francs from the two as a sign of good faith promising Orwell 150 for articles about British politics and the life under the capitalist system. He promises to send a formal request within a couple fo day after they pay five francs of their remaining money and after a week when they go back there is no trace of the man who disappeared owing rent. However this is nothing like the new Tory led coalition approval for TV advising for loans to the poor at interest rates of over  1000% a year. The bastards including one firm  part of sponsoring Newcastle United.

Orwell is taken on because he speaks English and can help staff as most of the guests are Americans,  with his job to keep clean and ready the private restaurant for senior staff. He is offered a months work, the usual practice but at first says no because of the commitment to work in the new restaurant of the Russian which is due to open in two weeks and where they have both been offered better paid jobs. However when he tells Boris what he has done he is sent immediately back to accept the offer. If the new job comes and is better paid they can leave as there will be no shortage of others waiting to take their places. The way is to ask to be paid on a daily basis although one has to keep money on your person as anything left in outer clothing is stolen and everyone is on the fiddle regarding the food and the drink

He works at one of the top hotels in Paris and his description of how the hotel is run provides an important insight into what was the situation and may well continue to be in  most parts of the world  including some  of the greatest cities where tourist flock and where Orwell questions the value to humanity of their existence. The guests paid extraordinary prices then as now but then were cheated at every opportunity bringing to mind the Innkeeper in Les Misérables but then of course they usually have the funds to so indulge as was brought out  in the BBC TV series on one famous London Hotel series.

There is also a class as well as wages system among the 100 odd employees hired to serve the 200 odd customers. The top hotel employees have their own dining room the Maitre d’ Hotel has his own table with silver service and staff attending. The cooks have moustaches  to show their superiority over the waiters who earn more through tips than those on fixed wages, while the waiters insist on junior staff also being clean shaven as a show of their power. He paints in some colour observing that the older char women with still painted faces are usually former prostitutes. Everyone steals food and from each other with the cellar man selling the rest of the measures  set aside for a few sous if he trusts you.

However he has little sympathy for the guests who eat food with ingredients used in such a way to bring profit, drinks of short measure,  bed linen not properly laundered because of the turn arounds. The emphasis is on the appearance and the presentation, the smiles of service without sincerity or care.

Understandably  Orwell concentrates on the role and life of plongeur or dish washer. They work in filthy condition with no regard for cleanliness as waiters clean the sweat from their faces using the disgusting washing up water from the soiled utensils. The description reminds of the Arnold Wesker literal kitchen sink drama The Kitchen which I saw in theatre, listened to the radio play and have the text part of trio of his works.

He describes the going to work and the coming home at night among the other works, the fights and the swearing, except on Saturday night when they congregate as a small  bistro near the hotel  when the work is done around 11 pm and get drunk returning to their beds between one and two and to sleep through before the cycle begins again. Every Saturday a communist believer by day gets drunk and rises to make a speech, word for word the same, too drunk to notes that he is regarded as a comic turn along with those who dance or sing. He also praises the importance of sleep, describing awakened by a murder  by three men seen running off by hitting a man dead with a lead pipe that after the street checked that the man was dead and nothing could be done for him, they left him there and  immediately back to bed and too sleep,

Whereas the waiters and other senior staff could with some optimism plan to better themselves and to marry, the plongeur had no prospects given the hours of working sixty to one hundred every week there was no time to study to importance job prospects and there was only  sufficient money to get drunk once a week. But you had three meals a day, the rent was paid and here was pride in doing the job although he questions the necessity for the role and why it was done rather than people revolt and demand a better life. He argues that the rich even if they care do not involved themselves with the lives of the poor,  Cameron is presently accused of not having visited one of the soup kitchens that have arisen because of the ongoing levels of unemployment and lowering of wages and benefits in real terms.

Orwell argues that if you put the poor in good clothes under a good roof and they are no different from the rich and vice versa. This is only a partial  truth as it is important to separate those who have become addicted to a substance or have emotional  or psychological problems, or become recidivists from those unable because of disability or lack of jobs or because of the nature of work and its pay.

Thus Orwell has described his experience having nothing and  then as a wage slave. However his experience in Paris continues when influenced by Boris they make the mistake of leaving the hotel when called by the Russian restaurant owner that he is ready to open, but this is for next week.

Free Thinking at the Sage

Saturday November 3^rd 2012 will not be remembered as the day itself but because of events that occurred, a BBC radio broadcast at the Sage Gateshead, a Newcastle Walkabout in warm afternoon sunshine and the most engaging of the Montalbano episodes throughout the two series this year.

The day commenced with uncertainty about what I should take with me and how long I would remain out. I had debated baking a baguette for salami and olives for lunches as I had only a few minutes between two planned events at midday. I decided against taking a bag with me although did put a small umbrella in my coat together with the ticket information and a notebook. I also failed to provide myself with as much time as appropriate after deciding on a little Wii exercise of some 15 minutes as it felt cold and indeed I had to zip up the double layered black Winter’s coat. I must make sure I have a woolly hat to hand.

It was just before 10.30 when I arrived at the Gateshead Metro Interchange station and I lost several minutes trying to find out the bus and stand for the Sage missing one and with close to 20 minutes for the next bus, twice the advertised every ten minutes painted on the side of some of the buses I decided to walk, a good decision. I went passed the new shopping development being created on the Get Carter Car park site and then the old Town Hall building which was used for the Tyneside Film Theatre while that was we being extended and refurbished, and then across a succession of pedestrian crossings to get to the entrance of the concert halls.

Since my last visit to the Sage there has been a major change with the ending of the splendid music listening library and Internet centre provided by Gateshead Leisure. This is now a second cafeteria restaurant. There has also been a major switching around with the ticket office outside Hall 2 and a shop outside Hall one. The cafeteria and the Brassiere are where they were. I had time for a coffee at £1.50 after collecting my tickets from the special BBC Free Thinking weekend desk. There was a separate bookstall related to the weekend speakers as well as a couple of screens showing one of the events already in progress. I had started the journey frustrated because I had brought a notebook but left a pen and was horrified at being asked to £2 for a Sage product, later when I purchased a pack of six pens for 99 pence at Rymans I found I had left the notebook at the Sage and ended up writing the notes on the way home on the back of the leaflet info about the event I had experienced.

The first recording of the morning was by Charlotte Blease a new Generation thinker providing a fifteen minute talk about the real nature of General Practice and medical diagnosis in general. She identified that there were a number of problems including those symptoms identified could match more than one problem and that the diagnostician was dependent to a great extent on what the patient was able to explain. My own experience is that without keeping records it is often difficult to remember when a change was noted or that a change occurs in such a way to suggest it needs to be reported or is considered part of the aging process or other natural imbalances which occur from time to time.

The talk was not an attack on medical practice being made but an attempt to place medical diagnosis in perspective. A current example is that even with a proven screening technique such as for breast cancer which is estimated to save 3000 to 4000 lives a year, for every one individual prescribed treatment a number were found not to have required it because what was detected did not lead to a malignant tumour yet without early detection women died unnecessarily.

There was no time for a comfort break between this talk and the first two major events with a panel approach to Rewriting History which was undertaken recently by Andrew Marr with his series on the history of human kind and which he reminded was part of a legacy with Bronowski The Ascent of Man. James Burke’s Connection and a series on Civilization which concentrated on the European cultures in the days of early Television. Anthony Beever is a leading military Historian who is completing or has completed a history of World War II from the World perspective which could argue that the World War commenced prior to 1939 with the Japanese attack and colonization of China. One memorable point made was that for 200 years Japan closed its borders and concentrated on it own development in terms of feeding its people and political and social government playing no part in the rest of the world, trading, politics, economics and this strengthened and led to self sufficiency. The third speaker Maria Misra was a Modern Historian whose primary subject was India while the chair for the session Rana Mitter background was Chinese History. What struck and a point briefly made later in the discussion is that the study of human kind is not the same as the study of the earth planet and that environmental changes, a la Hurricane superstorm Sandy can have more devastating consequences than the great wars, earthquakes, famines and floods etc against national and civil wars.

My point and one not made in the discussion is that given the potential mismatch between resources and population growth it can be argue that major disasters and wars are a way of stopping the population becoming too great for the planet‘s resources to sustain and that war also has proved to be a period of innovation and the rebuilding also becomes a time for economic growth as happened post second world war in Japan and Germany in particular.

Marr said that his work was leading up to the choice facing mankind was blowing themselves up or destroying the planet environmentally, or working towards the conquest of space and the unlimited possibilities and opportunities of that but also the threats given that the overwhelming populations of the Americas was destroyed by the importing of old world illnesses rather than through aggressive conquest. He said he was optimistic. I am not remembering the Ice Age and what happened to the indigenous Americans and is happening to the Africans.

I had to leave the discussion briefly when I knew I was going to have coughing fit so went out of some bottled water at an outrageous £1.60. Does anyone learn from History? Is there anything to learn? Karl Marx attempted to predict from selected historical events and circumstances while Hitler was enamoured by the ability of the British go control their empire was so few troops.

There was only 20 minutes before needing to queue for a good seat for the second discussion on Is Social Mobility overrated? There as time for a comfort visit and some sea salt and black pepper crisps 90p bring the total expenditure for the three events only £6.25 (I bought a ham and Cheese baguette from the Quayside Greggs on my walkabout),

The panel this time included the Guardian Polly Toynbee whose background includes the creator of Toynbee Hall in the East end of London always left of centre and currently President of the British Humanist Society and Treasurer of the Fabian Society. Lawrence Goldman is an Oxford Historian. The two other speakers were an obnoxious management consultant originally from New Zealand and a rational and practical woman from the North East who represented all types of schools in the region.

This was the least successful of the three events I attended. The problem was the vastly different perspectives, personalities and lifestyles on the panel looking at the problem from both of the telescope. On one hand the management consultant appeared to believe that individuals should be left to cope with their nature and nurture without state intervention and everything should be privatised and that it was in the natural order of things to be poor and the rich and for some people to move or down according to the decisions taken and the time and circumstances of their lives, while Toynbee appeared to believe that everyone should be able to achieve the best from their innate and acquired activities and the state should intervene to ensure an equality of opportunity.

I thought a better construction to the programme would have been to consider the extent which we are a class ridden society and its consequences or an examination of the obstacles to providing an equality of opportunity. The basic of living will always be food, warmth and shelter with work part of it and income associated with work a major factor. Education is good in itself but is usually associated with furthering opportunity while the arts and culture are and expression of what people feel about their lives and their society. Do I really want to encourage people to make more money that they need and then misuse their power or become aggressive and violent and social mobility is usually associated with people getting power and wealth to do what they want without regard to their obligations and duties to each other their families neighbourhood and communities.

The discussion on the day appeared to fix on Education while the current big issue is employment where capitalism and international capitalism are the governing factors together with the problem of allowing hordes in from European countries to come and work the jobs on low pay, mainly service and also other manual this creating an inter generational underclass. The third is shelter was not touched in the discussion.

The BBC Smiley The Looking Glass War

I have listened to Le Carré The Looking Glass War, having previously seen the excellent film with Anthony Hopkins and Ralph Richardson. The radio play as the film which I have on DVD lacks the emotional punch of the Spy who came Back from the Cold. It is also the story of how the individual may be sacrificed for the national advantage and sometimes for the national good, although at other times just to save face.

It is also the story of those who having experienced the tensions and the challenges of wartrime or some other difficult, at times threatening experience, then find it difficult to impossible to cope with the everyday of normal times. In this instances it is those left from military intelligence during World War II who participated in dangerous and vital operations, risk their won lives or the lives of others asnd who are now restricted to making assessments and reporting information for others, the Circus, professional spying in Cold War peace time for the State.

When a former contact located in East Germany provides a photos of what appears to be Soviet rockets being moved into East Germany of a type similar to those which were attempted to be located in Cuba, instead of passing the information to the Circus the aging Director of the Department’s agency sees the opportunity to return to the old days of glory and arranges for the pilot of charter plane on its way to Scandinavia to fly over East Germany by mistake and take aerial photos of the alleged site area. Unfortunately his contact unable to get a taxi back to his hotel is knocked down and killed.

The decision is taken to send an office man to take responsibility for the body and personal effects in the hope of retrieving the film. The chosen individual is a young man who is already having difficulties with his wife because of his inability to share all the details of his work with her. She feels isolated at home caring for a young child and resentful oft his freedom which he husband appears to have, especially as he appears to enjoy and be satisfied by his work and role in life. It is not an uncommon situation and when he announces he is going off on a trip this only reinforces her feeling of being left out.

The trip is not success and no film is found although this only fuels the paranoia of the head of the department that their man was not killed in an accident and that the film was taken by the enemy. He therefore convinces the Minister that they should send in someone to check out the allegations but because this should be the responsibility of the Circus all that the Circus is official told is that the project is a training one just as the visit to Scandinavia had been, keeping their hand in so to speak in the event of being required to provide an operational service again. I am guessing that in reality the military retained their full operation role after the World War and if anything it remained as professional and more reliable than what happened to the British Circus, so named because of its location although apt given what was subsequently revealed.

The decision is taken to use someone who was sussful in the War but is long since retired with a liking for gin basd cocktails and women and for a training house to be established with the departmental the link which means he has to live in an and away from home, another divide which becomes unbridgeable.

Thus far there is close similarity between radio play and film although the operative is involved in a sexual adventure when he is contacted and if I rememebr correctly the location of the training house is on the coast and not Oxford as in the book,

The Circus with its Control are consulted and their passive help arranged with George Smiley the link pretending to know less than they do although they do not then know precisely what the Department is up to. When there is a request for the ltest radio communicatiosn device in the hope that direction finders can be avoided, Smiley explains that the technical boys will not pass out equipment over which they cannot maintain full control, but they let them have a war time radio one where the crystal has to be changed at regular intervals to enable some difficulties for the direction finders.

The operation is doomed of course and soon after crossing into East Germany the operative encounters a young border guard and instead of knocking him out kills him thus alerting the entire nation to be on the look out for the intruder. Worse is to come become because Smiley’s lot have analysed the photos and found them to be false. In the film the Operative goes to meet the contact who is also like the rest of Departmental team wanting to relive past times and be regarded as important and also well paid

The enemy becomes quickly aware of the travels of the agent via his use of the radio, forgetting to change the crystals and in order to mislead they arange for troops to enter the area so as to give the oeprative something to report and help them to identify his precise location. In the film he is given a lift and kills the driver adding to the deaths of the innocent of what is a wild goose chase. In both the novel and the film the agent meets up with a girl at bar in the town where the rocket (rockets) were reported as being seen.

While the net closes in the decision is taken back home to cut their loses so that when the operatuve is caught and put on a show trial it will be claimed this is a stunt and that a war time radio was found in possession illustrates the absurdity of the claims. This horrifies and angers the young man in the department having established a close relationship with the operative he cannot understand the betrayal, the abandonment, in the context of having managed a couple of days home between the training and preparing for the departure, his wife has announced she will not be there when he returns.

In the book the fate of the operative is uncertain as he hides out with the girl to make what is his final radio call adn in film there is a post script where some children playing in what is now a summer field by the roadside come across the roll of film which is opened and cast to the winds. There is also the implication in the film there was reality, albeit unknown to the contact, at the deployment of missiles.

　

　

　

　

The BBC Smiley The Spy who came in from the Cold

The Spy who Came in from the Cold

and which has Brian Cox in the role portrayed by Richard Burton in the film. It was as consequence of watching a TV showing of the Spy that I embarked on getting the DVD’s of the Smiley series to add some other Le Carré books and DVD’s I had already acquired after the

Disappointment of the film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I have the film now ion DVD but have not viewed until doing with the sound turned off while I listened to the radio play which is provided on three DVDs. I then decided to also watch the film with the sound so as to establish the differences if any between the two as well as to reappraise the emotional and intellectual impact of both. Had I not such a long reading list before I would add the Spy such is the importance previously given to this work and reinforced by my experiences overnight.

The Spy who came in from the Cold provided audiences in the 1960 with reality of this work in the Cod War. There is an important discussion early on about the nature of the occupation in which unknowingly the main character Alec Leamas a wartime hero and until recently head of the Berlin Station is told by Control (head of service) that although while the soviets and others are aggressive in their approach to international relations, in the UK the policy is a defensive one, that the reality of the situation meant that the UK was required to adopt methods which at times were little different from those of our enemies. While as the book, and Radio play progresses it is evident that Leamas is told the full nature of the part he is to play or believes he has been told the part in full, we only know at the end that he has not and it is his reaction to this which stunned and affected cinema audience at the time and I assume those who had read or who went to read the book.

The Spy was a great success for Richard Burton as Alec Leamas and his co star Claire Bloom as the 23 year old communist who works for a small private library in which Burton is assigned by the Unemployment office after he leaves the service to go under cover in attempt to track down Hans Dieter Mundt who beat up Smiley in the first book to Call of the Dead Hans-Dieter Mundt and who turned out to be the assistant of his former friend and spy who dies when confronted by Smiley who then retires from the service.

Smiley is still retired but referred to at the commencement of the Spy and appears to play little part although there are confusing references and differences to his role between film and play which I would like resolved, for after all this book is part of the George Smiley series.

The first difference between film and radio play which I assume follows the book(s) more closely is that Leamas talks to the woman who we see drive over Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall when he is expecting his organising agent to arrive and who is the lover of the married woman who with her husband is able to cross over for stated reasons not remembered. It is conversation with her we learn that Mundt and Fiedler his number two of Soviet Security in East Germany have been systematically rounding up and killing all his agents. She says her lover will come over later and I found the radio play more intense and dramatic a description of his arrival part way across and being shot than in the film although both rank highly in terms of film openings. It is only later that we learn that his organiser in the East German network was a member of its Presidium and that he had provided us with the highest level of information about the governing Party and through membership of the security committee on security matters,

Leamas comes home and reports back and is asked if he feels burnt out or is willing to stay out in the cold longer and go after Mundt something he is only too willing to do given that Mundt was responsible for the deaths of all his network members in East Berlin, It is at this point Control admit that while the policy is not aggressive sometimes it is necessary to adopt methods like those of the enemy and therefore he has a plan to go after Mundt not through assassination but by discredit and making him look to be a British agent but letting the Soviets come to this conclusion through his deputy Fiedler, a Jew with Mundt was a former Nazi and both known to detest each other.

In the play we learn that the descent of Leamas officially out of the service is carefully planned and executed over a long period of time so that anyone checking would not be able to see that it was designed although whether because of the lapse of time the Soviets would see him as worthwhile approaching know to care about him was a gamble.

At the moment as I write and listen the evidence is that his placement in Library and meeting the young assistant member of the Communist Party CND supporter is not planned and indeed his handler repeatedly tells him not to get involved as he does himself realising that any intimate relationship makes him more vulnerable. It is when reminded of this after the young woman becomes his lover and after she cares for him when he become ill that the decision is taken for him to get himself arrested and sent to prison for three months.

There is a significant difference between the radio play and I assume the book text and the film. In the film Leamas is net by the girl who brings him a packet of sandwiches and says he will be staying her place when she his case. He will be there when she returns from work. There is no contact between him and the girl after he leaves prison.

The second difference is that in the film Michael Horden plays the Soviet contact posing as a representative for the After Care Charity the Link giving the impression of having official contact with the prison authorities and knowing he had refused to be helped by the Prison After Care association or speak to a prisoner. In the play he addresses Leamas by name and it is evident that he is contact on behalf of the Soviets. In both he plays a homosexual although while Horden’s manner is a give away this is not so in the play.

In the film Leamas is taken to lunch visits Control at Smiley’s home to report the contact Horden again for his £5 in case help and to meet his contact played by Robert Hardy as Carlton at a Soho girlie and drink club which is less seedy that reality and with a touch of the Windmill in style of presentation. When he accepts the offer of £15000 for his memoirs and £5000 retainer for availability for a further 12 months he insist on a visit to the girl for his suitcase refusing the demand for immediate availability and this also enables him to go to Smiley‘s House in Chelsea where George is there with control and confirms the plan and also demands that there is no contact between the service and the girl and that all records of her involvement should be removed. He tells he that he has to go away but plans to return and for them to be together.

In the radio play there is no contact between Leamas and the girl at all after he goes to prison although he had warned her that he had to do or finish something and that he would return to her. While he does go to a Soho club it is to meet Peters played in the film by Sam Wannamaker and by Michael Feast, the play who his Soviet contact to tell his story at a beach house somewhere in Holland.

When he visit the House in Chelsea he is told that Smiley is not there because he does not approve of the particular plan to get Mundt.

There is a long sequence which takes up the greater part of the second BBC CD in which the long term plots to get Mundt is first played out. His inquisitor appears to know everything there is about him but the one area of special interest is his role in thee banking section and the two field trips he made to Denmark and Sweden to take money paid into accounts there. He meets Fiedler number two to Mundt and realises that Fiedler is trying to prove that Mundt is a British spy.

The case is that after Mundtler beat up George Smiley and left him for dead in Call of Dead, he somehow managed to escape capture and was back in East Germany within a few days. The case is that during this time he was captured by the British and cut a deal. This is the weakest part of the ploy because turning someone into a traitor who is also professional trained, experienced and become and a senior operative take time as well as skill. Control has explained that the visits to Copenhagen and Stockholm( I passed through in train the first and stayed a few days in the latter) were part of the plan and where it emerges the money was paid and then withdrawn coinciding with visits to both cities by Mundt. Leamas is asked to sign letters to the banks seeking statements and one of these returns to show the amount was withdrawn when Mundt was there. This is the tipping proof for which Fiedler has searched over the previous three years that is from before Leamas agents were killed by Mundt. Leamas lays the role of a sceptic brilliantly Exclaiming that as head of he Berlin station eh would have known if Mundt or anyone had been a British agent above his man and team. Control had gone to Berlin to meet his agent to thank him and they had together for some 15 minutes, 10 in one version during which Leamas had not been present. It then becomes necessary for Leamas to move to East Germany, someone close to the Polish Border because his picture has been placed in he British press as a wanted man for breaking his parole, released after serving two months of his sentence. This was not happen in normal circumstances and still playing the traitor for money Leamas blames the Soviets as a means of forcing him behind the Iron curtain. What Leamas does not know is that Smiley has never left the service but author of the plan to get Mundt) or so it still seemed) and he had visited the girlfriend and offered her support on behalf of Leamas. She had then found that the lease on her flat was paid at a cost of £1000 by a charity which meant she no longer had to pay rent from her small salary.

Dramatically this part of the BBC serial ends as Mundt arrives and arrests Leamas beating him and asking his men to soften him up further before bringing to interrogation.

There is opportunity for Mundt to put his allegations that Leamas is part of a Smiley plot to discredit him before Fiedler arrives with authority for the release of and that a Tribunal is to be convened to hear his case against his boss. It is a persuasive case which eh outlines before calling Leamas as is witness backed up by a file of statements and the circumstantial evidence that Mundt is a traitor and should be executed. In the film the girl friend is approach and congratulated for her work as secretary of the small branch which as she has admitted to Leamas was because the member who proposed her fancied her and the branch only comprised seven members in total. She seeks. We hen see her gaining a holiday from her employer having been offered am exchange visit to East Berlin, The manager says she will not mention the travel is to East Germany to their employer. There is more conversation between her and Ashe from Party with no mention of the Link in the radio play but in both mediums she is not told about being called as a witness for Mundt until finding herself in the Tribunal and seeing Leamas also there. He is emotionally outraged that she has become involved and is warned more than one that further outburst will lead him to being removed and worse. The young woman is confused, afraid more for Leamas than herself and does not know what to say. Given the predicament he knows she is now in he decides to try and rescue her by admitting the truth that he is part of a plot to discredit Mundt. The case against Mundt is dropped and Fiedler is told there will now be an investigation into his conduct.

In the film all Fiedler can do is protest that this is the plan all along and that the traitor is to go unpunished. In the radio play there a calmer talk between Fiedler and Leamas because he has realised that Fiedler is right and that he has been set up not to catch Mundt who is working for the British but to discredit Fiedler because Mundt was turned by Control and Smiley and with their blessing he got rid the East German network in order top protect himself.

In both mediums Leamas is the first to find himself free by Mundt and in the play he has to plead for the girl to be released with him. In both they are given a car and instructions where to go and where they will meet and shown how to get over the wall. In both Leamas is told to go first and both are told not to stop or look back whatever happened and to remember that only some people have been told of the plan to get placements into the West and if there are any problems and delays they will find themselves being shot at by guards under instruction and without knowledge of their protected position.

This leads to one of the most moving powerful final scenes in the a motion picture as the girl is shot down on orders and then Leamas turns back down and is killed with her. In the play there is a conversation involving Control and Smiley over the decision of Leamas not to escape by leaving the girl when he had opportunity. It is Smiley I think who comments that this was his way of coming out of the Cold. Smiley is asked how long will Mundt be kept in place to which the reply is for as long as it serves the British purpose.