7 ms·

George Orwell and me: Richard Blair on life with his extraordinary father

73 points by lermontov 2y ago

ilamont 2y ago
What a great interview, with an unusual perspective … the son mainly knows Orwell secondhand, but understands him in a way that no scholar or fan or friend or journalist ever could. I happen to be re-reading Burmese Days at the moment, which I think is his best after 1984. The movie 1984 with John Hurt is also very powerful - I watched it with my teenager a few years ago and he was transfixed.
- rakejake 2y ago
  Burmese Days is my favorite Orwell. It captures the state of the colonies under British rule extremely well - the British new-arrivals who are derisive and at best ignorant of the local customs, the British who've grown up in the colony and are more sympathetic but stuck in a world where they'll never truly belong, the extremely corrupt rich locals, the poor mob who are easily misled, the endemic corruption in everything... This novel could have been set in post-independence India and a lot of the themes would have rung true.
  - 082349872349872 2y ago
    I've read 1984 as a poorly-drawn frame story meant to convey* Orwell's sincere argument, in the form of Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, which baldly states that even without colonialism in the picture, you ("the Middle") probably will still have to live with the extremely corrupt rich locals ("the High") and the poor mob who are easily misled ("the Low"), etc. etc. * or at best to provide a motive filling in the implicit blank left by TaPoOC's truncation: "deeper than this lies the original motive, the never-questioned instinct that first led to the seizure of power and brought DOUBLETHINK, the Thought Police, continuous warfare, and all the other necessary paraphernalia into existence afterwards. This motive really consists..."
    - gsf_emergency_2 2y ago
      ПЖ would claim later that the oppression and continuous warfare are merely unfortunate side effects! (Joke?) The motive consists simply of helping society be more effective!!* (Riffing on 2-ish Nussbaum-Sen derived questions: 1. How to hand out capabilities to the effective/viral but not necessarily wise.[0] 2. How to immediately extract the foremost interesting issue with any framework... that some undergrad can fix before you even sit down at your studydesk in your chalet tonight. *at learning/earning as a team. "too much information" is consensually the thing to insure against in the Overton; other things detractors ("prigs"/殺氣者) warn you about are to be reflexively dismissed as acts/will of god(s) **Otoh info asymmetry foments corruption. "moral hazard" is translatable to irl outcomes. ***not touching the CFG analysis directly atm, indeed, because those tractability monsters pull you under when you forget to focus on interestingness https://aarushgupta.com/2024/03/30/procrastination https://aarushgupta.com/2024/03/30/procrastination [0] S-N's "thresholds" I read as a placeholder for a thermodynamically grounded app of "festina lente". Colloquially: When your heat baths are way too mismatched, your Carnot efficiency...
  - ignoramous 2y ago
    > novel could have been set in post-independence India and a lot of the themes The colonialists did, but the baggage never left. Turns out oppression/corruption/subjugation/feudalism/communalism/obscurantism/cronyism is politically and/or economically profitable. The current ruling class learnt well from their predecessors.
- littlestymaar 2y ago
  > I happen to be re-reading Burmese Days at the moment, which I think is his best after 1984. Better than Homage to Catalonia?!
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bloak 2y ago
    I can't decide what my preference order would be, but I can admit that whatever literary criticism has to say on the matter, and I suspect it disagrees with me, I found "A clergyman's daughter" more fun to read than "Keep the aspidistra flying". You can read all nine of Eric Blair's books here: https://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-n-z.html#orwell https://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-n-z.html#orwell Sadly, those texts are not perfect. I noticed a number of OCR errors. Also, in "Down and out in Paris and London" there's a whole chapter about slang and swearing but nearly all of the swearing is replaced by ——! Perhaps all the printed editions are just the same; I don't know. Perhaps someone here has a modern critical edition and can answer that. It's chapter 32 and the 7th paragraph, for example, starting with "The swear words also change", has the sentence "The current London adjective, now tacked on to every noun, is ——." Does anyone have an edition that has the last word of that sentence?
    - echelon_musk 2y ago
      When I read a physical copy of the book published by Penguin I don't remember the slang being censored.
      - ilamont 2y ago
        I have a 1980s edition of Burmese Days and the swears are censored. Bollocks becomes B____s.
        littlestymaar 2y ago
        The editor who decided to censor a book from Georges Orwell must have had a very interesting sense of humor…
- MemexXx 2y ago
  I actually wish more people knew about not only the 1984 and Animal farm from Orwell
_joel 2y ago
As a Brit, I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment | “Use tea from India or Ceylon (Sri Lanka), not China,” it starts. “Use a teapot, preferably ceramic. Warm the pot over direct heat. Tea should be strong, six spoons of leaves per litre. Let the leaves move around the pot. No bags or strainers. Take the pot to the boiling kettle. Stir or shake the pot. Drink out of a tall, mug-shaped teacup. Don’t add creamy milk. Add milk to the tea, not vice versa. No sugar!”
- n4r9 2y ago
  That comes from a 1946 essay by Orwell named "A nice cup of tea". He published it directly after the second world war when rationing and limited imports were a recent memory. But as you say it broadly describes how we've drunk tea in the UK up to now. The main difference is probably that teabags are now much more common than tea leaves. Britain has a complex history with tea due to historical reasons. For a nation that claims to love tea, it's surprising that we generally don't care about drinking whole-leaf or single-origin. A British cup of tea is some sort of Baudrillardian simulacrum. Just compare it to wine or coffee, where blends are the cheap stuff which you avoid if you can. I believe the same was once true here, but WW2 - combined with our colonial history - changed everything. The book "Infused: Adventures In Tea" by Henrietta Lovell [0] has a nice section about this. For any "builders tea" drinkers interested in expanding their horizons, I'd recommend giving Yunnan gold leaves a go. You can buy a sample from online retailers like Adagio [1] (although have to pay delivery). Just boil and drink with milk in the normal fashion. The natural sweetness and earthiness of it blew my socks off the first time I tried it. Interestingly, Twinings' "Everyday" tea bags include some leaves sourced from Yunnan [2]. [0] https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/196229938560 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/196229938560 [1] https://www.adagiotea.co.uk/black/yunnan_gold.html https://www.adagiotea.co.uk/black/yunnan_gold.html [2] https://twinings.co.uk/products/everyday-80-tea-bags https://twinings.co.uk/products/everyday-80-tea-bags
  - _joel 2y ago
    Perfect, thanks, I'll try that out. Obviously in additon to my Yorkshire addiction.
- 2y ago

73 points by lermontov 2y ago

What a great interview, with an unusual perspective … the son mainly knows Orwell secondhand, but understands him in a way that no scholar or fan or friend or journalist ever could. I happen to be re-reading Burmese Days at the moment, which I think is his best after 1984. The movie 1984 with John Hurt is also very powerful - I watched it with my teenager a few years ago and he was transfixed.

rakejake 2y ago
Burmese Days is my favorite Orwell. It captures the state of the colonies under British rule extremely well - the British new-arrivals who are derisive and at best ignorant of the local customs, the British who've grown up in the colony and are more sympathetic but stuck in a world where they'll never truly belong, the extremely corrupt rich locals, the poor mob who are easily misled, the endemic corruption in everything... This novel could have been set in post-independence India and a lot of the themes would have rung true.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  I've read 1984 as a poorly-drawn frame story meant to convey* Orwell's sincere argument, in the form of Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, which baldly states that even without colonialism in the picture, you ("the Middle") probably will still have to live with the extremely corrupt rich locals ("the High") and the poor mob who are easily misled ("the Low"), etc. etc. * or at best to provide a motive filling in the implicit blank left by TaPoOC's truncation: "deeper than this lies the original motive, the never-questioned instinct that first led to the seizure of power and brought DOUBLETHINK, the Thought Police, continuous warfare, and all the other necessary paraphernalia into existence afterwards. This motive really consists..."
  - gsf_emergency_2 2y ago
    ПЖ would claim later that the oppression and continuous warfare are merely unfortunate side effects! (Joke?) The motive consists simply of helping society be more effective!!* (Riffing on 2-ish Nussbaum-Sen derived questions: 1. How to hand out capabilities to the effective/viral but not necessarily wise.[0] 2. How to immediately extract the foremost interesting issue with any framework... that some undergrad can fix before you even sit down at your studydesk in your chalet tonight. *at learning/earning as a team. "too much information" is consensually the thing to insure against in the Overton; other things detractors ("prigs"/殺氣者) warn you about are to be reflexively dismissed as acts/will of god(s) **Otoh info asymmetry foments corruption. "moral hazard" is translatable to irl outcomes. ***not touching the CFG analysis directly atm, indeed, because those tractability monsters pull you under when you forget to focus on interestingness https://aarushgupta.com/2024/03/30/procrastination https://aarushgupta.com/2024/03/30/procrastination [0] S-N's "thresholds" I read as a placeholder for a thermodynamically grounded app of "festina lente". Colloquially: When your heat baths are way too mismatched, your Carnot efficiency...
- ignoramous 2y ago
  > novel could have been set in post-independence India and a lot of the themes The colonialists did, but the baggage never left. Turns out oppression/corruption/subjugation/feudalism/communalism/obscurantism/cronyism is politically and/or economically profitable. The current ruling class learnt well from their predecessors.
littlestymaar 2y ago
> I happen to be re-reading Burmese Days at the moment, which I think is his best after 1984. Better than Homage to Catalonia?!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bloak 2y ago
  I can't decide what my preference order would be, but I can admit that whatever literary criticism has to say on the matter, and I suspect it disagrees with me, I found "A clergyman's daughter" more fun to read than "Keep the aspidistra flying". You can read all nine of Eric Blair's books here: https://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-n-z.html#orwell https://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-n-z.html#orwell Sadly, those texts are not perfect. I noticed a number of OCR errors. Also, in "Down and out in Paris and London" there's a whole chapter about slang and swearing but nearly all of the swearing is replaced by ——! Perhaps all the printed editions are just the same; I don't know. Perhaps someone here has a modern critical edition and can answer that. It's chapter 32 and the 7th paragraph, for example, starting with "The swear words also change", has the sentence "The current London adjective, now tacked on to every noun, is ——." Does anyone have an edition that has the last word of that sentence?
  - echelon_musk 2y ago
    When I read a physical copy of the book published by Penguin I don't remember the slang being censored.
    - ilamont 2y ago
      I have a 1980s edition of Burmese Days and the swears are censored. Bollocks becomes B____s.
      - littlestymaar 2y ago
        The editor who decided to censor a book from Georges Orwell must have had a very interesting sense of humor…
MemexXx 2y ago
I actually wish more people knew about not only the 1984 and Animal farm from Orwell

_joel 2y ago

As a Brit, I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment | “Use tea from India or Ceylon (Sri Lanka), not China,” it starts. “Use a teapot, preferably ceramic. Warm the pot over direct heat. Tea should be strong, six spoons of leaves per litre. Let the leaves move around the pot. No bags or strainers. Take the pot to the boiling kettle. Stir or shake the pot. Drink out of a tall, mug-shaped teacup. Don’t add creamy milk. Add milk to the tea, not vice versa. No sugar!”

n4r9 2y ago
That comes from a 1946 essay by Orwell named "A nice cup of tea". He published it directly after the second world war when rationing and limited imports were a recent memory. But as you say it broadly describes how we've drunk tea in the UK up to now. The main difference is probably that teabags are now much more common than tea leaves. Britain has a complex history with tea due to historical reasons. For a nation that claims to love tea, it's surprising that we generally don't care about drinking whole-leaf or single-origin. A British cup of tea is some sort of Baudrillardian simulacrum. Just compare it to wine or coffee, where blends are the cheap stuff which you avoid if you can. I believe the same was once true here, but WW2 - combined with our colonial history - changed everything. The book "Infused: Adventures In Tea" by Henrietta Lovell [0] has a nice section about this. For any "builders tea" drinkers interested in expanding their horizons, I'd recommend giving Yunnan gold leaves a go. You can buy a sample from online retailers like Adagio [1] (although have to pay delivery). Just boil and drink with milk in the normal fashion. The natural sweetness and earthiness of it blew my socks off the first time I tried it. Interestingly, Twinings' "Everyday" tea bags include some leaves sourced from Yunnan [2]. [0] https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/196229938560 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/196229938560 [1] https://www.adagiotea.co.uk/black/yunnan_gold.html https://www.adagiotea.co.uk/black/yunnan_gold.html [2] https://twinings.co.uk/products/everyday-80-tea-bags https://twinings.co.uk/products/everyday-80-tea-bags
- _joel 2y ago
  Perfect, thanks, I'll try that out. Obviously in additon to my Yorkshire addiction.
2y ago