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Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnand.

And me, William Durhampool.

Now, of course, you don't need me to tell you, but we are in the middle of our little Orwell mini-series.

And in the last episode, we were talking about Orwell's time in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, how he got dramatically shot in the throat, how his wife leapt in and saved his life and got them both out.

And it's during this time that he writes homage to Catalonia in 1938.

And in that book, I mean, it's so much a signature of his thinking and developing and writing,

he abhors the violence.

This time of sectarianism on the left during the Civil War.

This period of, I think, always life, it's fair to say,

is like watching a polarid develop and stabilised,

because this is the period when his political views really hardening adopts a new and very characteristic view of the world. And he sees the problem as being the power and totalitarianism,

which he contrasts with libertarianism. Everyone else in his generation is thinking left or right.

...