BUSINESS OPINION: British author's diaries resonate in the light of Ireland's experience in the past year and a half
ONE OF the many good things about working for The Irish Timesis the book sales. If you have ever wondered what happens to the hundreds of books sent into the paper that never make it on to the pages, it can now be revealed that they are sold to the staff and the money given to charity.
The books cover every imaginable topic and are sold a significant discount.
As a result, you are quite likely to take a punt on a book that in the normal way you might baulk at paying full price for because it just does not interest you enough.
One example is the recent edition of the diaries of British left-wing firebrand and author George Orwell ( Orwell Diaries, Harvill Secker, London; publishers' price £20; Irish Timesbook sale price €2.50).
It is a winner. The reason being the resonance between Orwell’s observations on British politics and society in the early years of the second World War and the turmoil that has been going on here and elsewhere during the past 18 months.
It seems trite – if not insulting – to draw comparison between a war in which millions died and a recession, no matter how bad. But if you change the characters, Orwell’s commentary is stunningly apposite when put in the context of Ireland over the past year and a half.
Take this critique of the British government in May 1941, shortly after the British army had been driven out of Greece and with the country on the back foot pretty much everywhere.
“Whenever you contemplate the British government’s policy, and this has been true without a single break since in 1931, you have the same feeling as when pressing on the accelerator of a car that is only firing on one cylinder, a feeling of deadly weakness.
“One doesn’t know in advance exactly what they will do, but one does know that in no case can they possibly succeed, or possibly act before it is too late.”
You might not necessarily agree that this is a fair description of Brian Cowen’s Government, but it would be a surprise if you have not at some stage over the past year and a half shared Orwell’s despair and frustration.
Another nugget is to be found in his entry for March 13th, 1941, when he muses on the accuracy or otherwise of commentators, which again is not irrelevant in a country in which everybody seems to have a different opinion on whether Nama will work: “Looking back at the early part of this diary, I see how my political predictions have been falsified, and yet, as it were, the revolutionary changes that I expected are happening, but in slow motion.
“I made an entry, I see, implying that private advertising would have disappeared from the walls in a year. They [adverts] haven’t of course . . . but they are far fewer, and the government posters far more numerous. [Cyril] Connolly said once that intellectuals tend to be right about the direction on events but wrong about the tempo, which is very true.”
Some encouragement from Orwell then for all the commentators predicting Nama’s failure, and our exit from the euro zone?
Orwell also manages to convey succinctly the mundane nature of life during wartime. He had the following to say a few days earlier, having just read the first official account of the previous summer’s Battle of Britain.
“But what chiefly impresses me when reading [about] the Battle of Britain and looking up the corresponding dates in this diary, is the way in which ‘epic’ events never seem very important at the time.”
Again there is a real danger of overdoing the comparison, but we are without doubt living through, almost without knowing, a period of massive global upheaval, combined with the most sustained crisis for this state since the second World War.
In a similar vein, Orwell describes going into a pub at a particularly low point in the war a few weeks earlier, in April 1941, to listen to the nine o’clock news, with the German army at the Egyptian border.
To his surprise, the landlady tells him the customers would rather listen to the piano playing in the other bar. Orwell then reminisces about a similar experience during the British retreat from Dunkirk when he had to ask the barmaid for the radio to be put on, and an even earlier one when the news the German army had crossed the Rhine was met with casual humour.
He wrote: “You have all the time the sensation of kicking against an impenetrable wall of stupidity. But of course, at times their stupidity has stood them in good stead. Any European nation situated as we are would have been squealing for peace long ago.”
And as we know, Britain survived. British society was changed forever, but Orwell’s revolution never happened.
