Though I haven’t read all his works, I consider myself a fan of George Orwell, who died 75 years ago today. If having a copy of 1984 on the bedside table is enough to get the UK Government’s ‘Prevent’ programme sweating, my bookcase would have them both shaken and stirred.
A personal favourite is his 1939 novel Coming Up for Air, set in the run up to the commencement of the Second World War. The novel’s protagonist, George Bowling, is a lower middle-class, middle-aged man dissatisfied with his lot in life who feels a deep anxiety about the coming global war and is simultaneously perplexed by the seeming indifference of those around him.
In response to his malaise, Bowling contrives to temporarily slip away from his wife, children and work to return to the village in which he grew up. Through Bowling’s narration, we relive his formative years, from trying to avoid working too hard in his parent’s animal feed supply shop to fishing trips (a topic which takes up a significant number of pages) to returning to the village as a First World War soldier to attend his mother’s funeral. We learn that his parents were put out of business by a larger national firm which was able to stock more products at lower prices. Bowling’s observations about what unfolded show just how prescient Orwell was. With their business failing and the First World War looming, he writes,
they lived at the end of an epoch, when everything was dissolving into a sort of ghastly flux, and they didn’t know it. They thought it was eternity. You couldn’t blame them. That was what it felt like.
It was a race between death and bankruptcy, and, thank God, death got Father first, and Mother too.
These lines never fail to have me fighting back a tear.
Orwell did write tighter novels but, to my mind, Coming Up for Air not only has a charm all of its own, it borders on the uncanny when applied to the West, to Britain, to England and to my own life.
My father is a vicar in the Church of England (C of E), a straightforward, straight, white, small ‘c’ conservative man. When he first applied to the C of E in his early 20s, he was told to go away and get some life experience and so, as a late 30s bank manager, he reapplied and, along with his wife and three sons, uprooted his life and took a significant pay cut to go to a training college and then to rural ministry, working with up to nine parish churches at a time. He was, and is, the church’s ‘man on the ground’, helping form independent food banks in poorer parishes giving not just pasta and tins, but education places and housing, and starting Bible study groups in others. Whether parachuting teddies from the church tower, launching fruit from a homemade trebuchet (I forget the biblical significance of these particular activities but I’m sure it was profound), or running ragged between funerals, weddings and services, he does it all, without much recognition from church superiors and, on occasion, earning their outright contempt.
My own experience of parish life in rural England is, in some ways, very similar to Bowling’s own reminiscences. I remember the old men singing so loudly and distinctly it was as if they were competing in a holy musical tennis match, I remember the smell of an ancient English church on a cold winter’s day, and applying my own childish interpretations to the bits of the service which went over my head.
I fully expect the churches which filled my childhood Sundays to be closed within my lifetime, a decline which seems to be inexplicably ever accelerated with reckless abandon by leaders in the C of E.
When I first read the novel and saw the parallels between Bowling’s parents and my own it brought more than a tear to my eye. In contrast to Orwell’s characters though, my own parents are well aware that we are reaching the end of another epoch, one which the C of E may not survive. Just as with Bowling and his parents before him, the world is moving in a seemingly uncontrollable, and certainly unwelcome, direction.
We are indeed all living at the end of an epoch, and I sometimes hear variances of this sentiment applied to the West or to the nation, but I rarely hear individual people really being considered. However you cut it, the West, the union, the nation, is made up of individual family units, all experiencing this painful and unnecessary flux in different and very personal ways. Bowling’s fictional parents felt it, just as my parents, your parents, you, and I feel it now. An Englishman, when glancing at his bookcase, seeing Orwell, Lewis, Huxley and a King James Bible should not feel a pang of anxiety, as I do. This is a small example of the sustained attack on every aspect of our lives. The failure of an institution such as the C of E to stand with and support those individuals who make it work on a daily basis, and even to turn its back on everything it should stand for is a much bigger one. Both examples have deeply personal consequences which are felt many times over across our country.
There is something truly demoralising about feeling oneself not only alone in one’s own country but assailed on all sides, fighting to find people willing to listen and to convince them to recognise that we did have something special and that that something is disappearing before us, aided by our smug, uncaring, technocratic intelligentsia.
Bowling cannot go back to his childhood, and neither can we. We cannot entirely recapture what has been lost, nor should we seek to recreate a pastiche of it (see Peter Hitchens’s critique of Reform). What is clear is that we must recognise, with clear eyes, who we are, what we are fighting for and what we are fighting against. We are Christian (culturally at least), English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish, each with our own proud individual and combined histories and cultures. We are fighting against all those who seek to disinherit us or to pretend that there is no inheritance to be had; be that via mass migration, climate lies or through increasingly draconian authoritarianism. Nothing short of a cultural and economic revival will do, one which is moral, unashamed, aware of our past, proud of our identity and both ambitious for, and fiercely protective of, our future. No man is an island, but we are all islanders, and though those who wield power would have us think that the changes we are suffering through are abstract, this is personal.
The Welsh have their own word, hiraeth – a deep longing for one’s home. It’s difficult for people to long for something that they’re told was institutionally racist and yet, inexplicably, owes its very existence to those it oppressed, but it’s increasingly clear that Welsh, Scottish, Irish or English, they are. How this is reconciled with the narrative provided by our elites will define our cultural landscape in the coming years.
As ever, Orwell puts it best. As Bowling relives his childhood memories whilst walking down a street he once knew well, he writes,
Is it gone for ever? I’m not certain. But I tell you it was a good world to live in. I belong to it. So do you.
I couldn’t have put it better myself, George.
Oscar Evans is the pseudonym of an arborist who helps landowners to manage urban tree stocks.
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A wonderful article which hits the spot. Sadly, we are at war and until the masses wake up to this we are heading for destruction as nations and peoples. There seems little to be optimistic about and ultimately we respond with force or accept a miserable fate.
Indeed. I am on the YouGov mailing list (I like to make sure at least one person with my views is represented in their survey results, though they probably delete mine…) and I got this today:
Keir Starmer on “new threat” to the UK: Share your thoughts
Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently described a “new threat” to the UK—one rooted in extreme violence carried out by individuals acting alone, often young men who become radicalised in isolation. Following the tragic Southport murders, the Prime Minister announced a public inquiry to address this issue and prevent similar failures. Do you think the government is doing enough? Are you worried about this “new threat”? Share your thoughts in today’s Daily Chat.
What could possibly have led to this “new threat” and what could possibly be done about it? Baffling! I expect the inquiry will do a great job – they could get Lady Hallett to chair it when she’s done with the “Covid inquiry”.
And the conclusion of the inquiry will be the far right is to blame, causing those it targets to become radicalised, or some other such nonsense.
It will most certainly not find government policy, any government, any policy at fault.
Immigration of alien peoples and cultures must be defended at all costs. Every piece of legislation and initiative going back to the Race Relations Act has been designed to cement and defend mass immigration – a doubling down. Why?
The most lenient interpretation is population replacement. The rather less pleasant is depopulation.
It has been going on for more than half a century. More than just a cockup.
Kalergi Plan?
Surely that’s just a conspiracy theory
TINA — there is no alternative. Our chatter-governing classes are aware that delivery drivers, fast food cooks and carers will be needed during their old age and since they’re not particularly in love with British people, anyway, they think the easiest way to get them without disrupting their own “sex life lifestyle” is importing them from elsewhere.
Yes, a certain sort of English person really despises other English people, especially (shudder) the working classes. Much easier to employ a Polish plumber and a Somalian delivery driver
” Do you think the government is doing enough?”
What an utterly diabolical and stupid question.
Given that Kneel is still shipping in thousands of “illegals” quite clearly he and his government are definitely NOT doing enough and so they are responsible for the Southport murders and very much responsible for the Pakistani Rape Gangs.
Lady Hallett – “it is not my job to look at the evidence,” or something similar.
Sex and travel Kneel.
They will use it the way they always do, to reduce our freedoms and gain more powers to the state regardless whether they address the issue at hand. Think David Amos as a good example.
A pretty transparent (and pretty disgusting) attempt to utilize the South Port attack for the fight against largely fictional “far right terrorism” of white people (based on the lefty US boilerplate for that).
A US lefty boilerplate reflected in a lot of US TV series which used to have “Arab” terrorists as bogeymen and now have “White supremacists” (whatever they are) and Russians.
Good article, thanks.
“We cannot entirely recapture what has been lost, nor should we seek to recreate a pastiche of it (see Peter Hitchens’s critique of Reform).”
Of course we cannot entirely recapture what has been lost because we cannot un-know things and things change anyway, but I don’t really get the “pastiche” reference nor the relevance of Reform. I did watch the linked YouTube clip which seemed devoid of any substantial critique of Reform (it was mainly ranting about Blair and Starmer) – this was possibly just very poor editing and a clickbait title. I have a lot of time for Hitchens but I think he’s wrong about Reform.
I share your views on Hitchens tof. He’s not always right. I will try to watch the video later.
A sad but true article.
Something similar that Charles Talleyrand wrote when he saw the French revolution:
Celui qui n’a pas vécu au dix-huitième siècle avant la Révolution ne connaît pas la douceur de vivre. “He who has not lived in the eighteenth century before the Revolution does not know the sweetness of living.”
As far as I can see, something went catastrophically wrong in Europe at some point, probably at the beginning of the First World War. 20 million dead, mass murder on an industrialized scale, then Lenin and Stalin, another 10 million dead, then World War 2, gas chambers, 50 million dead, then Mao, Pol-Pot, Vietnam, and after a brief reprieve (?) now we see the gradual destruction of what’s left of Britain and Europe. Coupled with the destruction of the family, the nation state, punitive taxation, dumbed-down education, mounting of unrepayable debt, mass migration by hostile individuals, vile marxo-fascist ideology everywhere and the mass media spouting propaganda.
And we have “leaders” like 2-Tier Starmer, Mastermind Lammy, Rachel from Accounts. Disgrace.
Perhaps this is indeed the Apocalypse, we are just too blind and stupid to see it for what it is.
Very true, 1914 was year zero.
Grey was right and the f’cking lamps still haven’t come back on again.
Describes perfectly the situation.
The dismally incompetent traitorous C of E is a microcosm of our anti-English and even anti-british establishment also described perfectly by Orwell in his famous “they’d rather steal from the collection plate” quote.
We’re not done yet, what goes around comes around but, so much that was wonderful has gone for ever.
Still, looking on the bright side, we do still manufacture the finest hempen rope in the world.
Towards the beginning of the German novel Gruppe Bosemüller (Bosemüller’s Squad), one of the main characters, the NCO (sergeant) Paul Bosemüller, recently married during a spell at home, has a daydream about the time after the war in his shelter at the edge of the Verdun battlefield. He envisions himself as policeman of the Grand Duchy of Baden controlling the papers of a beautiful young woman driving a car and consoling her that he’s just doing a routine check because everything must be done in the proper fashion when she bursts into tears to make her smile again. He also thinks of one of the members of his squad who’s the son of the owner of a famous sausage and meat products factory from his area with whom he has a tacit agreement that he’ll always overlook that his motorbike is a tad bit louder than allowed when encountering him in his official function after the war in exchange for him getting a share of the fine victuals the factory owner regularly sends to his son at the frontline.
That, too, was a good world to live in.
It was smashed to bits by the communist uprising in Germany 1918 which grew out of the attempt to meet Woodrow Wilson’s ever-changing demands for starting the process towards a negotiated peace instead of further bloodshed by “democratizing” the German constitution¹. I’m not so vindictive that I’d demand that Britain must lose what it took away from Germany or be happy about its impending loss, especially as this certainly wouldn’t improve anything in a world that’s already miserable enough, but it should be kept in mind that this is a certain flock of chicken coming home to roost, ie, that the United Kingdom is essentially getting (or supposed to get) the “Nazi Germany” (or “Germany Empire²”) treatment from people and groups who’ve seen that work wonders (for their idea of wonders at least) against German people and their home country.
¹ Wilson basically kept hinting at the possibility for peace negotiations provided just one more demand was met (and then another) until the German state (meanwhile a shaky republic threatened to be overthrown by militant Bolshevists any minute) had rendered itself completely defenseless. Then, all talk about peace negotiations “with the German people” was immediately forgotten and the newly minted republic was told what the terms of its complete surrender were supposed to be.
² All Germans being bestial mass murderers barely – if at all – above the level of wild animals was already a standard feature of British war propaganda during the first world war.
I don’t know about the first, but certainly during barbarossa your German friends achieved a level of vile barbarism and depravity which fully lived up to the most lurid propaganda.
So say official historical testimonies (records largely being lost or never existent) and people whose testimonies don’t agree go to jail. But that’s a conversation not worth having as this mess cannot ever (according to my opinion) really be untangled and that there wouldn’t ever have been a second world war (or at least not this kind of it) without the kind of end the first world war had had¹.
¹ Famously, Hitler decided that he must now become a politician in order to repair this damage after learning about the revolution while recovering from mustard gas poisoning in a Bavarian military hospital.
Undoubtedly the finest prose stylist I’ve ever read.
Pellucid, spare, but incredibly evocative.
Coming up for Air is a fantastic but deeply sad novel, and virtually everyone who grew up in a small town in England will identify with Bowling’s experience. It’s also interesting for the more metaphorical elements of the story – such as the ‘enlightened’ community George discovers at Upper Binfield made up of vegetarians, no doubt green voters these days, who have cut down all the trees and….but you can read it yourself. There is a lot of that about these days with so many people caring deeply about ‘the Environment’ but having no idea about the wildlife on their doorstep.
This novel reminds me of the channel TALKINGPICS TV with their series: The footage Detectives, reminiscing old pictures and long lost film footage.
Thank you, Oscar, for that poignant article. I share many of your experiences being a fellow child of the vicarage,or of the manse in my case. And let us not forget our mothers who made heroic sacrifices and economies, though not in such dire straits as the family of the perpetual curate, Rev Josiah Crawley of Hogglestock in The Last Chronicle of Barset. Perhaps a few things have changed for the better.
I haven’t read any, but I understand the gist!
Most comprehensive taught prolls do!
We are the majority, the likes of me,as in the past,will promote the change, not the learned academics for they are few, we are many!
Very late to this excellent article. Having recently researched my grandfather’s first world war, sucked up in the sausage machine of The War To End All Wars, the whole tragedy seems a Crime Against Humanity committed by European governments and Powers That Be of the time.
Same maelstrom that Bowling and parents caught up in. Follow the power, follow the money, follow the narrative – for The War To End All Wars, read Saving The Planet.
I completely agree with what ‘Oscar Evans’ says here. An excellent article. Maybe I’ll read Coming Up For Air…
Orwell was a stylist all right, perhaps the defining one, but he was a miserable sod. It is difficult to forgive Thomas Hardy for the scene in Jude where the children are hanged. It is difficult to forgive Eric Blair for the scene in 1984 where Winston Smith cries: ‘Do it to her. Let it eat her face.’
What was Orwell’s point?
Having plumbed his own black mud and having made Freud’s ‘My God, It’s me!’ mistake, he had given up. He had found the source of his lifelong angst, anger and misery. In consequence, the final chapters of 1984 are the most harrowingly pessimistic in literature.
Writing in 1948, with death hurrying to meet him the following year, he signed off with the old-time-religionist’s point, the Freudian point: people, all people, are rotten, the evil outer world is a mere reflection of the evil inner.
As I say, miserable sod.
Orwell was a former communist who was well aware what Stalin was really doing in the USSR and who also knew that the forces of liberty, democracy and human rights had voluntarily allied with him which enabled Russian troops to run rampage all over eastern middle Europe, displacing and killing people by the millions and turning green pastures into a desolate and depopulated wilderness it has remained until today. Even Hannah Arendt – the German jew whose career in antisemitism studies was terminated by the Nazis – admits that there were not only labour but also, actual death camps in Soviet Russia. But this was all fine, including forcing all so-called liberal democracies created because of the right to self determination of the peoples under the Russian yoke because nothing unites as much as a common enemy and principles just get in the way of victories.
What hopes for the future of mankind could he possibly have had in 1948, after having been forced to learn that all so-called ideal goals of the 20th were just Potemkin-style facades for the mass slaughter and eternal (that’s what it was meant to become) oppression of “the wrong uns”.
United we stand for freedom, democracy, the right to self-determination of the peoples, mass-killing of civilians in their sleep by nuclear firebombing, eternal enslavement of the working class, Stalinist purges and Russian death camps! isn’t a particularly great slogan. It’s certainly enough to turn someone who’s already terminally ill into a terminal pessimist.
The England of my youth (late baby boomer) has gone forever. It can’t be restored; we will be lucky if a shadow of what it once was remains in 30 years time.
I’ve witnessed the deliberate destruction of my country over the past 60 years. I wish I was older, so I didn’t have to witness the irreversible decline they have deliberately engendered.
I am never really sure whether what is happening is the end of our civilisation, a bit like the Roman empire, or whether it is just a silly stage that can be rectified. But there seem to be a decreasing number of people capable of putting it straight. USA leads, as a younger and more sane country.
When I consider the advent of AI, it seems like a culmination, because it is difficult to see how sense can come back from that.
A great (if not tear-jerking) piece. Orwell’s writing is worryingly under-read by all, despite the ubiquitous usage of terms like ‘big brother’.