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Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Hindustan Times
Anna Funder: 'Orwell was sadistic, paranoid and misogynistic'
How does your experience as an international human rights lawyer help you as an author? What skills did you pick up in your previous career and continue to rely on? I was a lawyer briefly and a bad one. I was very young when I stopped. What has stayed with me is the training in trying to identify the very heart of an issue so that you can ask the right questions. I have also retained a sense of what lawyers call natural justice, which means that you have to consider the opposing view, almost with as much energy, to make sure that you are being fair. This approach has been very important to me in all my work. Lawyers are also trained to dig dirt on people, which is what you do very well with your book Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life. How was that experience for you? (laughs) Digging dirt on author George Orwell was not my aim but I was very shocked at what I found. Well, I think that he was a repressed homosexual. There is a lot of evidence for that. He co-wrote the novella Animal Farm with his wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy. It was her idea to write that book, and her voice is very much in it. And it looks like she saved Orwell's life during the Spanish Civil War. I also didn't know that he was so enormously unfaithful to Eileen. Besides all this, he was sort of irresponsible in other ways. He almost had his nieces and nephews killed in a boating accident, which was very preventable. He was a bit reckless with his own life and with others' lives as well. These discoveries about his life were unexpected. Your approach to his life seems like that of an archaeologist or a detective. Please tell us about your research. With the sort of legal mind that I have, I really try to get all the facts right. That's why this book has a huge number of endnotes to tie in everything to fact. That said, I want the reading experience to be seamless. I want people to inhale this book. I want it to be so exciting that you just keep going. Research helps. I went to Spain where Orwell and Eileen lived during the Spanish Civil War. I paid a visit to the trenches in Aragon, and I walked around Barcelona. Orwell was fighting in the war, and Eileen was working for a Marxist political party. I also went to a remote island called Jura off the coast of Scotland and spent some time in the house where Orwell wrote his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. I went into the bedroom where he lay as a very ill man recovering from tuberculosis and typed out his book. It was so moving to be there! In addition, I went to some archives in London for primary research. I also read six major biographies of Orwell quite closely. The accounts of his life vary across books. I was keen to examine how his life has been written up and how Eileen has been written out of it. What makes Eileen an attractive personality for you? Well, everybody loved her and I think I know the reason why. One of her friends was a novelist and wrote her into a character in a novel. Eileen had an ability to listen deeply. She made people feel seen and heard. She had the generosity of spirit to really think about something from someone else's point of view. She could sense how they were feeling. If you could plan a girls' day out with Eileen, where would you take her? I live in Sydney, so I would take Eileen for a long walk along the cliff tops and the beach. We'd look across the ocean at the lighthouse and just talk and talk and talk. I would ask her a lot of questions. I want to know how much she loved Orwell, though one can never quantify love, or how much he and his work were a way for her to write before she found the confidence to write on her own. She was the one who took up jobs to support them financially. She worked in the Department of Censorship in the Ministry of Information in London during the Second World War. And later she worked at the Ministry of Food. The ministries that Orwell writes about in Nineteen Eighty-Four were informed by her work. Eileen was fabulous! Was Eileen bitter about Orwell taking credit for her work, or would you call her a doormat? No, Eileen was in no way a doormat. But I don't think that she was bitter either. She was extremely intelligent. Once, she said that Orwell had 'a remarkable political simplicity' whereas she was a very sophisticated political thinker. One of the biographers quoted her as saying that he had 'a remarkable political sympathy'. My research showed me how biographers changed the words because they could not bear their hero, Orwell, to have a wife who was cleverer. I think Eileen was happy that she was improving his work. Of course, she was pleased with Animal Farm. It is really an almost perfect novel. Orwell and Eileen wrote it together. Your book completely changes the way fans look at Orwell's life and work. What are your thoughts on recent allegations of sexual assault against author Neil Gaiman, and how they are changing the way fans approach his work? This issue applies to a lot of male figures throughout history because patriarchy allows men to have a public reputation that is decent, and then do things in private to women and sometimes children. The crimes that they commit are edited out of the story. Shame works to silence women and children who are victims of sexual abuse. We are seeing this with Neil Gaiman now but we have seen this with Woody Allen too. People don't seem to care about it. Things get complicated when you are talking about an artist because artists are often looking at things right out on the edge of what it is to be human. We want works of art to frighten us or to reveal things that we are refusing to see. They go to the edge of what is acceptable. They write out of their flaws at times. Orwell was sadistic, paranoid and misogynistic. You see all these aspects represented in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. People don't seem to mind them. I haven't read Neil Gaiman before and I don't plan to read him now. I hope there is justice for the women involved because terrible things seem to have happened. But my 15-year-old son is reading his book at the moment and I am not telling him about the allegations that have come out. He is 15, and I just want him to have this experience of reading the book without knowing all of that. Personally, what I know about Orwell doesn't bother me. I am happy to read his work. I am not less fond of him. I see him as a much more complex man. The superhero version of Orwell is fictitious, and someone who was so vanilla could never have written those books. You stand on the shoulders of several feminist historians and activists. Please talk about those who have influenced your work. The work of Adrienne Rich, the American poet and essayist, has been very important to me. She was an extraordinary thinker about women and men, and sexuality. Her essay, Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence is among my favourites. She had a beautiful way with language because she was a poet, a fearless person, and unbelievably smart. Resistance is a theme that runs across your books. All That I Am revolves around people who resist the Nazis. In Stasiland, you write about people who resist the secret police in East Germany. Wifedom is about Eileen who resisted patriarchy in her own quiet and dignified way. What makes you return to this theme in every book? This is a very deep psychological question. How much time do you have? (laughs) Firstly, because I'm interested in human courage and human conscience, and those things are to be seen most clearly in extreme situations where they are called into being. We need to think about resistance today because we live in a surveillance society of the kind that the Stasi could only have dreamt of. Despite the risks, people are resisting today. They are questioning, for instance, what Donald Trump is doing. Stories of resistance are appealing to me as a novelist because they are about what it means to be human, to be brave, to take action and be a hero. I grew up in an upper-middle class left-wing household. As a child, I was very aware that a lot of power was being exercised over me. I grew up observing my parents as powerful intellectual giants running the regime, if you want to call it, of the family. That was a deeply formative experience for me. There was a lot of argument around the dinner table. It was ostensibly intellectual but it also had a lot of emotional force. As a writer you are always looking at what's really going on under the surface. My childhood was my training in looking at powerful people, hearing what they were saying and then sensing what was going on at an emotional level. Chintan Girish Modi is a journalist, educator and literary critic. He can be reached @chintanwriting on Instagram and X.
Irish Times
24-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Swift Blaze of Fire by Lin Rose Clark: Engaging account of Irish Olympian killed fighting for republican Spain
Olympian, Cleric, Brigadista: the Enigmatic Life of Robert Hilliard Author : Lin Rose Clark ISBN-13 : 9781843519218 Publisher : Lilliput Press Guideline Price : €18.95 'Bob Hilliard was a Church of Ireland pastor, from Killarney across the Pyrenees he came…" Most people who have heard of Robert Hilliard know him from Christy Moore's song lauding the Irish who fought for republican Spain . Thirty-two years of age when he was fatally wounded at Jarama in February 1937, Hilliard had been a journalist, an Anglican cleric, an Olympic boxer and was the father of four young children. Lin Rose Clark is Hilliard's granddaughter. In this wonderful, engaging narrative she rebuilds a fascinating and complex life which spanned several diverse worlds. Christy Moore called the Irish Brigadistas a 'comradeship of heroes', but if Hilliard's deeds in Spain were heroic, he was also a flawed human being. The 'crushing betrayal' of leaving his wife Rosemary and four children haunted the family. While remembered by his comrades in Spain for his 'sense of humour and consistently cheerful attitude', Hilliard was not always an attractive personality. He was a heavy drinker for a period, a gambler and capable of cruelty towards his wife. READ MORE Clark tries to disentangle family lore from fact and to rebuild the lost worlds of his life. From a comfortable middle-class Protestant background in Kerry, Hilliard was a student at a still-unionist Trinity in the 1920s. But there he played hurling, boxed (he represented Ireland at the 1924 Olympics) and experimented with new ideas. [ The Last Ditch by Eamonn Sweeney: Brave admissions about mental health struggles hit hard in follow-up Opens in new window ] [ Ghost Wedding by David Park: Compelling novel bleeds past and present in tale of secrets and division Opens in new window ] He dropped out and an unsuccessful period as a journalist in London, which coincided with his marriage, left him on the brink of alcoholism. Redemption came through immersion in religion, his becoming an adherent of the Christian Oxford Group (involving a 'complete personal surrender' to God) and then studying to become an Anglican priest. Hilliard's path to communism and Spain was not straightforward, then. Clark shows how living in Belfast and London, the impact of the Depression and the rise of Nazism all profoundly affected him. She conveys this story without romanticism, mindful of the human cost to Hilliard's family of his political choices. In her epilogue, the author tells of her mother, Deirdre, finding a postcard to Rosemary that implored her to 'teach the kids to stand for democracy. Unless fascism is beaten… it means hell and war for our kids". Amen to that.
Straits Times
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Spain returns artwork seized during Civil War
Ernest Urtasun, Minister of Culture, gives a speech during a ceremony held by the Spanish government returning paintings stolen during the Spanish Civil War from Pedro Rico, former mayor of Madrid, to his family, at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, May 22, 2025. REUTERS/Ana Beltran A person looks at paintings, stolen from former mayor of Madrid, Pedro Rico, during the Spanish Civil War, displayed before being returned to his family during a ceremony held by the Spanish government at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, May 22, 2025. REUTERS/Ana Beltran A person looks at paintings, stolen from former mayor of Madrid, Pedro Rico, during the Spanish Civil War, displayed before being returned to his family during a ceremony held by the Spanish government at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, May 22, 2025. REUTERS/Ana Beltran Francisca Rico, granddaughter of Pedro Rico, former Mayor of Madrid, attends a ceremony held by the Spanish government returning paintings stolen during the Spanish Civil War from Rico to his family, at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, May 22, 2025. REUTERS/Ana Beltran Ernest Urtasun, Minister of Culture, gives a speech during a ceremony held by the Spanish government returning paintings to the family of Pedro Rico, former mayor of Madrid, stolen during the Spanish Civil War, at the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, May 22, 2025. REUTERS/Ana Beltran MADRID - Spain on Thursday returned paintings belonging to a former Madrid mayor that were seized for their protection during the 1936-39 Civil War and never returned under Francisco Franco's dictatorship. The seven paintings had been kept in several museums throughout Spain, including the Prado Museum in Madrid, where the handover ceremony to the family of Pedro Rico, Madrid's mayor as the Civil War broke out, took place on Thursday evening. In 2022, the Prado published a list of artworks that had been seized during the war and set up a research project to track down their legitimate owners. The government has identified more than 6,000 items, including jewellery, ceramics and textiles, as well as some paintings, sculptures and furniture, which were safeguarded during the war by Republican forces fighting Franco's Nationalists and never returned by Francoist institutions when he came to power. "It's a very important moment of justice and reparation that the Spanish government is doing for their families," said Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun. The paintings returned to Rico's family nine decades later were mainly scenes of everyday life by 19th-century artists such as Eugenio Lucas and his son Lucas Villaamil. Francisca Rico said she was very moved by the restitution of the paintings belonging to her grandfather, who was mayor between 1931-1934 and then in 1936 and who died in exile in France. "(They're ) finally doing what should have been done long ago," she said. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
ABC News
20-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
The Australians who fought General Franco and his forces in the Spanish Civil War
In 1936, as Spain descended into a bloody civil war, the left-wing Republican side put out an international call for help. They were fighting against the right-wing Nationalists, who were led by the country's dictator-to-be General Francisco Franco. Thousands of people travelled to Spain to join the fight as part of the International Brigades, including the likes of British writer George Orwell. Among the less high-profile recruits was a small band of Australian men and women, who left their lives in Australia for what they saw from afar as a great ideological battle. Australia has a long and complicated history of foreign fighters, including most recently people travelling to Ukraine. But, as their admirers boast, the Australians of the International Brigades can claim a significant title. "They were the first Australians to fight fascism," Michael Samaras, author of Anti-Fascists: Jim McNeill and his Mates in the Spanish Civil War, tells ABC Radio National's Late Night Live. The 1930s was a tumultuous decade for Spain. The country's monarchy collapsed and there was a shift to democracy. But with this, social and political tensions flared. It culminated in Franco's military coup against the democratically elected government, which kickstarted the civil war. The right-wing Nationalists received aid and troops from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, while the left-wing Republicans were assisted by the Soviet Union and the volunteers of the International Brigades. Samaras says that about 65 to 70 Australian men and women joined the International Brigades or other parts of the Republican side. But they did so in an unofficial and often clandestine way. "They went against what the government of the day was doing … They weren't allowed to go," Samaras says. "Australia's government in the 1930s was a government of appeasement. We were following Britain's policy to appease the dictators in Europe. With the Spanish Civil War, we followed a policy of non-intervention." This meant the difficulties for these Australians started long before the battlefield. "They went under false names. They went illegally. They stowed away [on ships]," Samaras explains. Among the Australians who travelled to Spain was Wollongong steelworker and outspoken communist Jim McNeill. McNeill was a prominent "Wobbly" in the 1920s — that is, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical, international working-class organisation. He later joined the Communist Party of Australia. As in other countries at the time, Australian leftist groups clashed — sometimes violently — with right-wing groups like the New Guard, which was the largest fascist organisation in Australia's history. "[McNeill] was very much at the forefront of fighting the New Guard," Samaras says. And this included actual fights, with McNeill reportedly shot at in one clash between the groups in the Sydney suburb of Drummoyne. After the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, McNeill was determined to heed the call. He later said he made this choice after his experiences with the "vicious" New Guard in Australia, and that Spain "was the first place to organise against the fascists or Nazis, Mussolini or Hitler". But McNeill didn't have the money to get to Spain, so he stowed away on a ship from Melbourne to England. McNeill then travelled to France and trekked across the Pyrenees mountains into Spain where he joined, trained with and then fought for the International Brigades. The Australian fought in the Battle of the Ebro, the longest and largest battle of the Spanish war. He got injured, went missing and was presumed dead. But McNeill survived the war and returned home to Wollongong. Australian men like McNeill either joined as troops or worked in logistical roles, while women served as nurses, doctors, translators and in administrative support. Samaras says around 16 Australians were killed in action including Ted Dickinson, a close friend of Jim McNeill and fellow political firebrand. Dickinson fought in the Battle of Jarama, where he was captured and then executed by Franco's forces. According to a fellow soldier, among his final words he reputedly said: "If I had a bunch of Australian bushmen here, we'd have pushed you bastards into the sea long ago". Samaras says the band of Australians who shipped off to Spain were broadly leftists, mostly communist, and every last one was deeply opposed to the global spread of fascism. "They were our first pioneers against fascism, the first Australians to stand up and take up arms, to put their lives on the line." The world was far more disconnected in the 1930s, meaning most Australians didn't follow the specifics of the Spanish Civil War. Instead they were concerned with things like "paying the rent, football and racing", Samaras says. "But people who did care, cared deeply." On the Republican side were the likes of McNeill, the Communist Party, trade unions, and some within the Labor Party. On the Nationalist side, it was mainly people involved with the Catholic Church, as the new democratic Spain had been taking steps to diminish the power of the Catholic Church there. Only one Australian was known to have fought for Franco and the Nationalist forces. His name was Nugent Bull. "He was a Catholic … His family were undertakers in [Sydney's] Newtown. He did the books at Luna Park," Samaras says. After the end of the Spanish Civil War, Bull went to England. And in an "astonishing, ironic turn of events", he joined the UK's Royal Air Force as an air gunner and was killed in the Battle of Britain. "So he was fighting for the fascists in Spain, and then against the fascists in World War II," Samaras says. General Franco and the Nationalist forces won the Spanish Civil War, which came to an end in early 1939. The violence and atrocities from both sides had left at least 500,000 people dead. "Both sides did terrible things. It was a terrible war," Samaras says. "[But] the killing didn't stop with the end of the war. Franco was not about reconciliation. He was about extermination. He wanted to get rid of his enemies … he kept imprisoning and killing people up until his own death in 1975." During the Cold War years, communists and other leftists were viewed with great suspicion in Australia, which did not help with the legacy of the International Brigades. "They became a victim of the Cold War," Samaras says. There are two unofficial memorials for Australians who fought in the Spanish Civil War — one in Melbourne's Trades Hall and one in Canberra's Lennox Gardens. But Samaras laments that there has been no official recognition by the federal government or the Australian War Memorial. ABC Radio National contacted the Australian War Memorial about the Australians who fought in the Spanish Civil War. "The Australian War Memorial Act 1980 determines that the Memorial commemorates Australians who have died on or as a result of 'active service in war or in warlike operations by members of the Defence Force'," a statement said. "As the Australians who fought in the Spanish Civil War were not members of the Australian armed forces, they fall outside the legislated remit of the Australian War Memorial." The statement added that its collection does include items from the Spanish Civil War. But Samaras is continuing his fight for recognition. "History proved [these Australians] right very quickly," he says, as the end of the Spanish Civil War was soon followed by the start of World War II, when Australia went to war against Nazi Germany, and then Fascist Italy. "So the people who got in first should be respected and admired," Samaras says. "The Australian government has never done anything for them … They've never been honoured officially."
The Age
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
The untold story of the Australians who helped fight Franco
HISTORY Anti-Fascists: Jim McNeill and his mates in the Spanish Civil War Michael Samaras Connor Court Publishing, $39.95 Doubtless European leaders today use the Spanish Civil War as a lesson to harden resolve against Vladimir Putin and Russia. Like Ukraine, the Spanish War came to represent a global struggle against authoritarianism. The Western democracies' milquetoast non-intervention response deteriorated into appeasing Adolf Hitler, failing utterly to check fascism's advance early, leading to the far bloodier war later. Yet, some foreigners understood that fascism could not be simply 'niced away' and considered the Spanish Republic and democracy worth defending, enlisting regardless of their country's official stance. Many had escaped fascism at home, but some came from Western democracies like Australia. Anti-Fascists: Jim McNeill and his mates in the Spanish Civil War is about one group of Australians whose principles and conviction took them to a faraway battleground. Anti-Fascists was knocked back by a dozen publishers before finding a home with Connor Court, a boutique publisher with climate denial in their back catalogue. Author Michael Samaras had already proved his research mettle in 2022 when he made headlines for discovering Wollongong Art Gallery had a benefactor who had been an intelligence agent in the Lithuanian SS. You would think a well-researched history of Australian anti-fascists would easily land a mainstream publisher. The book revolves around Balmain born Jim McNeill but branches into the stories of 'his mates', giving Anti-fascists an episodic quality. The other major figure is renowned English firebrand Ted Dickinson whom McNeill meets when he joins the International Workers of the World (IWW). The pair work together promoting the 'Wobblies' with Dickinson often speechifying in recognisable forums like Sydney's Domain. Like McNeill, his mates are mostly working class, some from very difficult backgrounds. They experience political awakenings through the labour movement which imbues them with a sense of justice and international solidarity. Their convictions are tested on the streets. Depression Australia was preceded by labour violence like the Port Adelaide waterfront strike where the union took on 1000 newly appointed 'constables' armed with rifles and bayonets. Once the Great Depression struck proper, battles took on ideological lines. Australia's The New Guard was a far-right paramilitary group that took cues directly from Hitler and Mussolini and bragged a Sydney membership of 36,000. Their toughs disrupted speeches which often led to all-in brawls and sometimes worse. This background is important because it shows what drove McNeill and co. to take an immense risk to travel to Spain. Most had never left the country, and the dangers began before they set sail. Foreign enlistment was actively discouraged in Australia, as it threatened the claim of neutrality. Passage was also difficult – almost all of Samaras' anti-fascists stowed away on Europe-bound ships, some transiting through the UK where foreign enlistment was a crime for all British subjects, Aussies included. From there they were smuggled through France and across the Pyrenees to Spain.
