This essay sums up Orwell's feelings after World War One. His ability to pick out moments in history and describe, at least from his perspective, the mindset of others in his position is key to many of these shorter essays. For the most part it seems to be about the transition of the memories held by those involved in war efforts in comparison to those who were not involved in them. He cites his own experience of how trendy pacifism was for him but how it inevitably left him cold when he interacted with people who had a details interaction with warfare. The way in which hardship is turned to nostalgia and reinforces ones understanding through experience.

As alluded to in the title it's an essay examining his ambivalence over right and left positions. If anyone would like to know his reasons for being so adamant to evade the doctors and fight in the Second World War then this is the essay for you. After reading this I have started to read his wartime diaries. If you enjoyed this essay then you should definitely read them.

As usual, time spent reading Orwell is time well spent. This book is the second of three presenting his essays, journalism, and letters. It covers the early years of World War II. His subjects here include essays on other writers, notably Rudyard Kipling, T.S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, and Mark Twain. These examinations were not only rewarding themselves, but led to several other books that expanded the topic. Just what one hopes for in good non-fiction writing.

Apart from these literary excursions, I found his wartime observations most interesting. His strong socialist views appear in articles he wrote for the literary magazine Partisan Review in which he sometimes noted the incipient "revolution" in England to replace Churchill with a figure from the left. He eventually receded from this view and came to support the Churchill government. Other wartime writings, including from his diary, touch on wartime developments on the on both the home and fighting fronts. Some of these writings are interesting, but link to names and events that are obscure to current readers. His comments on the American contribution to the war effort seem stinting, and his remarks on American troops seen about London are critical to condescending at times. He is also hard on Mark Twain, so America and Americans apparently did not rank high on his list of the liked at this time. He writes frequently on the expected Nazi invasion of England and of the doing of the civilian support services such as the fire wardens and the home guards. Orwell served in both of these efforts.

The included letters are not impressive as these deal mainly with petty arguments among the literati or with his business arrangements with publishers.

Recommended for contemplative reading.

If Volume 1 was a portrait of the writer as a young socialist, then part two is when George Orwell goes to war.

It is a little difficult to tell, since the four volumes are misleadingly referred to as Orwell’s collected non-fiction whilst admitting to some editing and omission in the introduction. However, what appears to come across is that Orwell has almost a monomania in his writing about whatever issue is most current in his mind.

At the time of the Spanish Civil War, then this preoccupied him. At this time it is the war. If it was simply a matter of depending on his public works, we could assume that this is all that he found paid work in writing about. However his private letters and diaries reflect the same concerns and preoccupations.

There are perhaps two themes that run through much of Orwell’s writing at this time. The first is patriotism. For Orwell, the fault of many on the Left at this time is their failure to realise the importance of patriotism.

He gives his famous account of his country in The Lion and the Unicorn, including descriptions repeated by conservatives who failed to spot some of the irony in the original text. Orwell is critical and exasperated by his country, but ultimately he will always identify with it, and he deplores the left who oppose it.

This can lead to an occasional narrow-mindedness to other countries and his views on India can seem patronising and contemptuous to us now, though he was better than many of his contemporaries in his attitudes towards the colonies.

There is in fact a streak of conservatism in Orwell’s vision of socialism – he can support his country, the war, the occupation of India and leaving the capitalists in place in a socialist society, albeit as managers of a planned economy rather than free entrepreneurs. Orwell had seen the deadly effects of communism at first hand during the Spanish Civil War and was understandably more moderate in his wish to apply socialism to Britain.

The other running theme is pacificism. Orwell has little time for the pacifists and dismisses them as ‘objectively pro-Fascist’. He believes that their attitudes are naïve and will only allow fascism to triumph for a long time. He is also not too keen on the defeatism that he detects in much of the Left at the time.

There is sadly little time for Orwell’s essays in this volume, and we get many matter-of-fact descriptions of the war in Orwell’s letters to the Partisan Review and his own wartime diary (which takes up about a fifth of this volume).

These provide an interesting insight into what it is like being caught up in the war. Major events can get very little description and minor events can occupy a lot of space, showing that what seems important to us now may not have seemed so then.

Orwell’s predictions about the war are not always correct, less so than he himself sometimes seems to think. His belief that socialism would be necessary to win the war also proved to be mistaken, though it is the nature of socialists to always seek to be optimistic about the triumph of their beliefs.

There is always a danger for anybody who lives by trying to predict the future – economists, political analysts, meteorologists, astrologists etc. If they are wrong when they predict the future, then we may well question how accurate their analysis of contemporary events is. Of course Orwell was willing to admit that his predictions could be wrong, and less complacent than many.

Of course, Orwell can take a break from the war and discuss other matters. There is always time for literature reviews, even if Orwell felt they were irrelevant at this time. A few essays are included in which he has time to criticise Tolstoy’s hostility to Shakespeare, be dismissive of Mark Twain’s courting of public opinion (which Orwell felt had prevented Twain from being as good a writer as he might be) and to analyse the good-bad works of Kipling and the silliness of Yates.

Overall, this is an interesting collection and gives the reader a feel for life during the war and a political age where leading figures really cared about significant political issues.

George Orwell was such a conscious writer. I enjoy his essays simply because of the fact that he seems to care what's happening. With his books like 1984, he did try to warn us what might happen in the future, unfortunately, people are really stale.

My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

One of the most pitilessly, admirably, honest observers ever. Was early to join the now-unpopular school of thought that held Winston Churchill to be a coward (viz: Gallipoli) and a fraud (viz: loading arms on to the Lusitania, a civilian passenger ship). His integrity shines throughout.

With Hitler and the Nazis bombing down his door in this second volume of essays and letters, Orwell manages to still knock out a few (477 pages worth) peices on England, the War, and the potential end of literature as we know it. It's the blitz baby and George is right there taking it all down in his diary, letters and essays as he reflects on Shakespeare, the Spanish Civil War and tea. Whether you are a facist, communist or just plain British, Orwell has something to say to you.

Every aspiring writer should read Orwell - the clear, economic prose combined with his intellectual rigour and honesty render this collection readable from start to finish, even if it's just a review of some long forgotten novel or a letter to his publisher. The same applies to Volume 3. Volumes 1 and 4 are still on the shelf - I'm saving them for cloudy days.

3.5
While reading this book I found out that I'm burnt out. I don't really remember what was happening (of course I know that it's about war and all but I don't remember closer). But even tho I didn't really pay attention I finished it and I liked it.
Some parts were really sad but the book got just more personal when he was writing about Prague (I live in Czechia).
In the end I decided to reread this book when my brain will return.

I GET UNREASONABLY DEFENSIVE OVER ORWELL BECAUSE I READ ANIMAL FARM WHEN I WAS 11 AND IT BLEW MY TINY LITTLE MIND. THEN I READ VOL 2 OF HIS COLLECTED JOURNALISM AND EVEN THOUGH HE WAS OBVIOUSLY WRONG ABOUT SOME IMPORTANT THINGS, HE HAS SUCH A LIKEABLE PERSONALITY THAT IT WAS LIKE MAKING FRANDS WITH SOMEONE WHO'D BEEN DEAD FOR DECADES.

IAWTC

This shows how people can be pulled by both sides of political spectrum and that not everything is black and white.

A style of writing that is capable of making you feel like you were there, and that’s probably the best feel you can have in literature.

Using this entry for the essay of the same name, not this book.