NOTES ON HARD TIMES

GEE, WHY EVER SHOULD this title about George Orwell catch my eyes these days? Now you tell one. 

Remarkable Diaries: The World’s Greatest Diaries, Journals, Notebooks, and Letters, foreward by Professor Kate Williams, contributions by R.G. Grant, Andrew Humpherys, Esther Ripley, and Iain Zaczek, DK Penguin Random House, 2020.

Actually, “Notes on Hard Times” is the Orwell chapter in the book Remarkable Diaries reviewed here at SimanaitisSays awhile back. The tidbits following are gleaned from this book, as well as from a recent YouTube recommended by a favorite writer of satire.

Eric Blair, a Diarist. The chapter begins, “Eric Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, kept diaries and notebooks for most of his life—11 of these have survived. They provided raw material for his articles and books, allowed him to vent his ideas on politics and society, and satisfied his compulsive urge to document the world around him.”

“Orwell visited the north [of England] for two months in 1936, sharing the living conditions of the poor. He kept a diary that later provided material for his book The Road to Wigan Pier.” This Sheffield image and those following from Remarkable Diaries.

Orwell (we’ll follow convention of using his pen name) was in his 30s during the Great Depression, during which he traveled with vagrants in rural Kent and fought in the Spanish Civil War. The article continues, “Sadly, the notebooks of his service in the Spanish Civil War were lost. Of his other diaries, the two written in the early years of World War II (1939-1945) are the most interesting.” 

“Orwell and his wife, Eileen, lived in a flat in London during most of the Blitz, from where he described the devastation firsthand.”

A Wartime Propagandist. Orwell began his second wartime diary on March 14, 1942. “By then,” the article recounts, “he was working at the BBC, which he describes as having an atmosphere ‘halfway between a girls’ school and a lunatic asylum.’ His job was to broadcast propaganda to persuade India to support Britain in the war.”

The first page of Orwell’s second wartime diary. 

The article continues, “He was not happy about this, writing ‘All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth.’ ”

Post-War Diaries. “After the war,” the article notes, “growing in fame but failing in health, Orwell withdrew into a crofters life on the bleak Scottish island of Jura. His Jura diaries are a record of daily facts, from the state of the weather to pulling turnips, fishing for lobster, and observing seabirds. His last notebook entry was written shortly before he died of tuberculosis in a London hospital in 1950.” 

Of course, his best known work is Nineteen Eighty Four (1949), which expresses his hatred of totalitarianism.

Image from “A Quartet of Alternative-Fact Books.”

A Favorite Satirist Today. In “The Best of Lines,” I described “Andy Borowitz has an amazing way of condensing his satirical news stories into four or five concise, rib-splitting paragraphs.”

Andy Borowitz, author of “The Borowitz Report.” Image by Dionic at English Wikipedia.

Since that fateful day of November 5, 2024, he has offered particularly cogent (and often hysterical) views on coping with the next 3 years, 10 months, 22 days, 17 hours, and 55 minutes. But who’s counting?

His “‘This Will Not Stand’: A Call to Action from Van Jones” is an inspirational message. It “filled me with hope,” Borowitz said. “The resistance has begun. And we will prevail.”

I agree, thanking both Van Jones and Andy Borowitz for this hope. And George Orwell for his diaries. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025