Cold Open

It’s December 19th, 1931, inside a seedy pub in East London.

A gangly, sad-looking young man sits slumped at a corner table, his eyes heavy-lidded with drink. 28-year-old Eric Blair has already had five pints of beer and almost an entire bottle of whiskey. The alcohol coursing through Eric’s bloodstream numbs his senses.

Eric is an aspiring writer who wants to document the lives of the poor and downtrodden. For several months now, he has been immersing himself in London’s squalid East End, observing the experiences of the people who live here.

Tonight, Eric intends to go one step further. He wants to get arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct and be forced to spend the night in jail. He then hopes to turn his experience behind bars into a newspaper article about London’s criminal underbelly.

When the barman rings for last orders, Eric heaves himself up from the table, picks his way unsteadily across the room, and motions for the barman to pour him another whiskey.

Eric raises the glass to his lips and gulps the liquor down.

With the room spinning, Eric turns and staggers toward the exit…

In his moth-eaten suit and flat cap, Eric shuffles off down the street, the cold night air stinging his cheeks. Up ahead, he spots two police constables patrolling the sidewalk. And Eric seizes the opportunity. He lurches up to the officers, deliberately stumbling in front of them, drunkenly weaving left and right.

The constables don’t hesitate. They grab Eric by the scruff of the neck and place him under arrest.

Soon, Eric finds himself locked in a cell with an assortment of drunkards and petty thieves. He sits down in the corner with a look of satisfaction on his face. Then, Eric reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a pencil and notebook, and begins to write.

Eric Blair will record his observations in prison – the peephole in the cell door, the single flickering light bulb, the sadistic enjoyment of the police officers as they manhandle the inmates — using all of them to write an article about his experience. Then, one day many years later, Eric will draw on his spell in jail once again; this time while writing his masterpiece, a dystopian novel about an authoritarian society that he will title 1984 and publish under his pen name George Orwell on June 8th, 1949.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is June 8th, 1949: George Orwell’s 1984 Becomes a Literary Sensation.

Act One: Orwell in Spain

It’s December 1936 in Spain; thirteen years before 1984 will hit bookshelves.

George Orwell sits aboard a train as it trundles toward Barcelona’s central station. The 33-year-old writer looks out of the window at the desolate landscape of the war-torn city. Orwell feels a pang of nerves as he contemplates the potentially fatal decision he’s made by traveling to a country ripped apart by Civil War.

Over the past five years, Orwell’s writing career has slowly gathered steam. While working various odd jobs, he's managed to publish a handful of novels and one memoir about his experiences living in poverty in London and Paris. In his books, Orwell takes aim at certain aspects of contemporary society that he considers detrimental or dangerous, be it social inequality, material greed, or excess consumerism. His writing has been critically well-received, but commercial success continues to elude him. This stems partially from Orwell’s refusal to pander to the public’s appetite for light entertainment. Orwell believes it’s the responsibility of the writer to comment on the world around them, and to deliver hard truths no matter how unwelcome they are.

Most recently, Orwell has been monitoring the worrying surge of right-wing populism in Germany and Italy. Orwell is a socialist and considers the rise of fascism in Europe to be a profoundly concerning development. The latest country to fall victim to its extremist elements is Spain. A few months ago, rebels in the military took up arms against the country’s democratically-elected liberal government. And now Spain is engulfed in a Civil War between the fascist revolutionaries and a coalition of socialist workers’ militias, known collectively as Republicans.

Like many idealists intent on defending democracy in the face of fascist aggression, Orwell has traveled to Spain to fight for the Republicans. He intends to document his experiences and later write them up as a memoir about the war.

Back in July, an attempt by fascist rebels to seize control of Barcelona failed. And since then, the city has been under the control of workers’ militias. Now, as Orwell walks through the city, he sees evidence of Spain’s political strife everywhere he looks. Almost every wall has been covered with scrawled images of the hammer and sickle – the international symbol of communism. Orwell notices that the class system appears to have been completely suspended. Nobody seems to be dressed in fine clothes. Instead, all pedestrians he passes are wearing grubby workers’ overalls and address each other not as “señor”, but as “comrade”. 

Then Orwell makes his way to the Lenin Barracks, the military headquarters of the socialist workers’ party. There, the Englishman signs up as a volunteer and receives his uniform and bedding. Over the course of the next few days, Orwell undergoes ‘basic training’, though he is shocked by how amateurish the militants are. Many of the volunteers are mere teenagers, youngsters full of ideological zeal but without the slightest bit of military experience. Their training consists exclusively of conducting marching drills around the cobblestone courtyard because they don't have enough rifles to practice shooting. Orwell is dismayed by this operation, though he can’t help but feel moved by his comrades’ blind devotion to their cause.

After just a week in the barracks, Orwell and his fellow volunteers are called up to the front. One evening in late December, Orwell boards a train groaning with militiamen. There’s a nervous electricity in the air as the locomotive chugs across the plains toward the mountains. Somebody passes Orwell a bottle of wine, and he takes a swig, the alcohol helping to calm his jittery stomach.

Orwell and his company then arrive at a quiet stretch of the front, which sees little action in the first few months of their deployment. Still, life in the trenches is far from easy. Orwell and his comrades must endure a brutally cold winter and an insufficient supply of food and firewood. Fortunately, Orwell is accustomed to hardship from his destitute days in London and Paris, and it isn’t long before he is promoted to corporal.

As the Spanish Civil War wears on, Orwell and his company are transferred to a town in north-east Spain. And there, one morning in May, Orwell is walking the trenches checking on the sentry posts, when a sniper’s bullet catches him in the throat. The force of it sends him sprawling to the ground, blood gushing from his mouth. Orwell is stretchered to a field hospital, where medics give him morphine and manage to stop the bleeding. The bullet missed Orwell’s main artery by a millimeter. He knows he’s incredibly lucky to be alive. But his time as a soldier is over.

Once he’s recovered from his injuries, Orwell will return to England. But the political situation in Europe will continue to unravel, with the continued rise of fascism casting a dark shadow across the continent, and sparking in Orwell an idea for a novel that will make him famous.

Act Two: World War II and Animal Farm

It’s August 1941 in London; eight years before 1984 will be published.

George Orwell lopes up the front steps of 55 Portland Place, home of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The now 38-year-old writer pauses on the threshold, a look of doubt suddenly appearing on his long, shadowy face. But it’s only a fleeting hesitation. Orwell stubs out his cigarette and then strides confidently through the revolving doors of the BBC.

Orwell has recently been hired as a radio producer by the BBC’s Eastern Service – a department of the national media organization that serves Britain’s overseas territories in Asia. Orwell’s brief is clear, he will be producing propaganda pieces for broadcast in British India, ensuring that wartime morale remains high in that corner of the colonies.

Two years ago, Britain entered World War II against Nazi Germany. Orwell has always been committed to resisting the spread of fascism and can think of no worthier cause than taking up arms against Hitler’s authoritarian ambitions. So he eagerly enlisted for military service. But Orwell’s hope of active duty was snuffed out. The gunshot wound that he had sustained during the Spanish Civil War has left him impaired, and he failed his medical assessment.

Still, Orwell’s desire to contribute to Britain’s war effort remained undiminished. So he accepted this job producing the BBC’s propaganda broadcasts. Though Orwell is suspicious of any government telling their citizens how to think, he admits that in a time of war, some degree of thought control is warranted.

A receptionist meets Orwell in the lobby and guides him through the labyrinthine building. It’s a hive of activity. Announcers sit inside recording booths broadcasting light entertainment programs. In the newsrooms, typists frantically write up bulletins detailing the latest reports from the frontlines. Orwell is ushered downstairs to a dingy basement office occupied by the Eastern Service. He has never worked in an office before, and as Orwell sits down at his desk, he feels a twinge of longing for the wild mountains and valleys of Spain.

But despite his reservations, Orwell excels in his new occupation. It isn’t long before he is sitting behind the microphone himself, presenting his own cultural programs for listeners in India. Orwell is a known anti-imperialist, and his BBC supervisors believe this fact will make him a popular and trusted voice among the people of India, who have been striving for independence from Britain for many years. 

As well as being staunchly anti-imperialist, Orwell’s socialist sympathies are also well-documented. But this is of some concern to the propaganda branch of the British government – the Ministry of Information – who suspect that they will need to keep a close eye on the leftist writer. But when government officials approach Orwell for confirmation that his personal politics won’t get in the way of his patriotism, the writer reassures them. He reasserts his commitment to Britain’s fight against fascism and insists that the views he expresses on air will never contradict government policy.

But despite these assurances, Orwell is still subjected to additional oversight. His scripts require prior clearance from the Ministry of Information before being broadcast, and a state official is required to sit with Orwell inside the recording booth, ready to interrupt the program should the writer stray from the government’s pre-approved message.

Eventually, this stifling atmosphere becomes too much for Orwell. He would never say anything that could threaten national security, but the constant surveillance makes him feel claustrophobic and creatively frustrated. So he resigns from the BBC in 1943 and takes up a new role as the literary editor of the Tribune, a left-wing magazine.

By now, Orwell is also immersed in writing his latest novel; it’s an allegorical tale inspired by the events of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the subsequent betrayal of communist ideals by power-hungry dictators like Joseph Stalin. By this stage in World War II, Britain has allied itself with Stalin, a strategy that Orwell finds unconscionable given Stalin’s murderous policies against his own people. And this sense of outrage fuels Orwell’s writing.

As the war drags on, with German air raids continuing over London, Orwell enters the most productive period of his life. As well as writing countless book reviews for the magazine he edits, he also makes good progress on his novel, which is on track for publication next year. But then, one night in 1944, disaster strikes. While Orwell and his family are visiting friends outside the city, a German bomb hits the Orwells’ home in West London. Fearing he’s lost years of work—there was but one copy of his manuscript—Orwell rushes back to the capital and begins picking through the rubble with a wheelbarrow. He manages to recover most of his books and papers, including his unpublished novel – slightly charred and crumpled, but still legible.

The following year, Animal Farm hits bookshelves and becomes an overnight bestseller, catapulting its author to unprecedented levels of fame and fortune. But just when Orwell’s professional success reaches its peak, tragedy will blight his personal life. His wife, Eileen, will die suddenly, leaving Orwell the lone parent of their adopted infant son. Crippled by grief, plagued by his own failing health, and troubled by the emerging complexities of the new post-war world, Orwell’s outlook will become increasingly pessimistic, leading him to embark on a new project: a dystopian novel that will change the face of the literary landscape – and cost its author his life.

Act Three: A Bright, Cold Day

It’s May 1946; three years before the publication of 1984.

A small wooden boat skims across the surface of the sea, a few miles off the coast of the Scottish mainland. Sitting huddled on deck, his lean face unshaven and pale, is 43-year-old writer George Orwell. The boat’s driver, a gruff local fisherman, clears his throat and points toward a streak of rock looming on the horizon. Orwell glances up, his bright eyes registering the presence of the remote Scottish island that is about to become his home.

Following the publication of Animal Farm, Orwell’s life grew infinitely more complex. The novel’s enormous success triggered a tidal wave of interview requests and fan letters. Already overwhelmed by this outpouring of adulation, the death of his wife plunged Orwell even further into malaise, and exacerbated his declining health. So, one of Orwell’s friends offered him the use of their cottage on the remote Scottish island of Jura, a secluded outpost where Orwell can recuperate and write.

As the fisherman’s boat reaches the shore, Orwell walks up the sandy beach to the lonely white-washed stone cottage. He pushes the door open and looks around. It’s simple and primitive, lacking electricity and running water, but Orwell knows it’s the perfect place to shut himself away from the world and work on his next novel – a tale about a man living in a totalitarian society, where citizens are under constant surveillance, and where one’s own private thoughts are monitored by the state.

While imagining this hellish world, Orwell draws on his own experiences as a Britain during wartime, as well as taking inspiration from Soviet Russia and fascist Germany. By the end of 1947, he is well into his third draft. But his health is getting worse every day. Orwell has been diagnosed with tuberculosis, and the disease eats away at him. Orwell knows he’s in a race against time to finish his novel. But the mental strain he’s under only makes him sicker. Not wanting to waste any time, Orwell refuses to see a doctor and instead hammers away at his typewriter day and night.

By the end of November 1948, the novel that Orwell has decided to call 1984 is finished. He sends the manuscript to his publishers, who recognize the book’s brilliance immediately. On June 8th, 1949, the novel is published to great fanfare and flies off the shelves. The tale grips readers with its chilling depiction of a world under round-the-clock surveillance, controlled by an all-seeing “Big Brother.” It’s deemed a masterpiece and sends Orwell’s fame to new heights.

But the writer can hardly enjoy the book’s reception. He has already left Jura and is hospitalized at a tuberculosis clinic in England. Seven months later, Orwell passes away at the age of forty-six, having only fleetingly glimpsed the dizzying success that his last novel will become. As the decades pass, 1984 will be enjoyed by generation after generation, becoming a classic of dystopian literature and a cultural touchstone, as relevant today as it was upon its release on June 8th, 1949.

Outro

Next on History Daily. June 9th, 1973. Secretariat wins the Belmont Stakes by an unprecedented 31 lengths, capturing the highly coveted Triple Crown, making horse-racing history.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mischa Stanton.

Music by Lindsay Graham.

This episode is written and researched by Joe Viner. 

Produced by Alexandra Currie-Buckner.

Executive Producers are Steven Walters for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.