{"id":4739,"date":"2026-09-13T22:36:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T10:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/?p=4739"},"modified":"2026-09-17T22:40:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T10:40:53","slug":"homage-to-catalonia-george-orwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2026\/09\/13\/homage-to-catalonia-george-orwell\/","title":{"rendered":"Homage to Catalonia \u2013 George Orwell"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This is Orwell\u2019s account of his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War. It\u2019s mostly fun to read \u2013 I got a good sense of the life of a (motley) soldier. As they say, it\u2019s long stretches of uncomfortable boredom punctuated by brief bursts of terror. Orwell gives us a mix of petty complaints and gossip, analysis of battle tactics, conspiracy theories (some true), politics and much more. He writes with increasing weariness and disillusionment about the political infighting on the anti-fascist side. You can tell it\u2019s not going to end well, even without taking into account the fact that we actually know<\/em> it didn\u2019t end well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I said this book is mostly<\/em> fun to read. The least fun part was the description of the various factions on the anti-fascist side. There are too many acronyms designating the various groups. It was only one chapter but I found it heavy going and couldn\u2019t tell you much about it now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The narrative finishes when he and his wife Eileen manage to get out of the country in 1937. They were lucky to get out when they did \u2013 they were tried in absentia<\/em> by a Communist kangaroo court, not too long after they had managed to escape the country. He definitely wasn\u2019t optimistic about his side\u2019s prospects of victory. It would have been interesting if he had added a postscript a couple of years later, after the fascists had won. And we all know what happened next!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is Orwell\u2019s account of his time fighting in the Spanish Civil War. It\u2019s mostly fun to read \u2013 I got a good sense of the life of a (motley) soldier. As they say, it\u2019s long stretches of uncomfortable boredom … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[116,4,284],"class_list":["post-4739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-biography","tag-books","tag-george-orwell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4739"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4742,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions\/4742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}