Toughness of Churchill & Orwell

Review by Bill Doughty––

Thomas Ricks's choice of subject is at first glance a head scratcher. What could right-wing imperialist Winston Churchill and left-wing flamethrower George Orwell have in common?

Churchill in WWI, middle row, center.

George Orwell

The answer: toughness of character, love of freedom and a commitment to truth and action. Both fought in combat for their belief in democracy and liberty – Churchill as an army officer in the First World War, Orwell twenty years later as a rebel against fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Churchill also served as First Lord of the Admiralty in the lead up to WWI.

In "Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom" (Penguin Press, 2017) Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ricks shows how military experience shaped the two men as thinkers and writers.

In Orwell's case his position was cemented as a lifelong skeptic. "From Spain on, his mission was to write the facts as he saw them, no matter where that took him, and to be skeptical of everything he read, especially when it came from or comforted those wielding power."

For Churchill, connections to the military informed his approach as Prime Minister. "From his time in World War I, and even more from his two turns at overseeing the British navy, Churchill had developed a delicate feel for the wiles of military bureaucracy."

The bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 1941 was a moment of truth for the United States not only in the Pacific but also, Churchill immediately realized, across the Atlantic to Europe.

"Churchill's post-Pearl Harbor address to Congress was a work of political genius," Ricks writes. "Its structure was artistic, with four sections that could be titled: I, We, They, Us Against Them." Churchill was a good writer but a great orator.

"Orwell's reaction to Pearl Harbor was markedly more skeptical about the Americans. While Londoners were becoming more pro-Russian, he observed, 'There is no corresponding increase in pro-American sentiment – the contrary.'" Still, Orwell seemed to be enamored with the idea of America if not the reality. Writer Christoper Hitchens, Ricks says, described Orwell as having a "curious blind spot" about America.

"Among Orwell's favorite authors were three Americans – Twain, Walt Whitman, and Jack London. Orwell does not seem to have been much influenced by the scathing portrayal of the nineteenth-century United States by another of his favorite writers, Charles Dickens. 'Martin Chuzzlewit,' a novel based upon Dickens's tour of the United States in 1842, depicted America as a nation of 'dollars, demagogues, and bar-rooms,' violent and deeply hypocritical, prating about honor, freedom, and liberty while enslaving millions."

Mark Twain (Library of Congress)

Ricks's book, with great photos of the protagonists and insights into their work, is a fascinating examination of two vines intertwined in the arc of history in the early 1900s.

Both men were drawn progressively more toward the ideas and ideals of the United States – including as expressed by the venerated Mark Twain.

"Early in his career, in the mid-1930s, Orwell had contemplated writing a biography of Mark Twain, but could not find a publisher interested in the project. Churchill also contemplated a book on an American theme in his youth – a history of the American Civil War. As a young man on his first lecture tour in America, he was introduced on the stage by Mark Twain."

During WWII, as Churchill led the British nation, Orwell served in the Home Guard. Orwell, influenced by the war and especially the postwar period, wrote his great novels "Animal Farm," published in 1945, and "1984," published 69 years ago this month in 1949.

After the war Churchill, like Orwell, retreated to the countryside to write. He had been voted out as prime minister and took what Ricks calls his "revenge," his Homeric war memoirs, starting with "Volume 1: The Gathering Storm."

Ricks examines each of Churchill's volumes and concludes, "No one can ever consider the history of World War II without referring to Churchill's account."

Orwell, however, may have the longer lasting impact on the world, at least from a literary standpoint. "A new post-Cold War generation has found his words to have resonance," Ricks writes. "All told, in terms of contemporary influence, Orwell arguably has surpassed Churchill."

Orwell, whose hero of 1984 is named Winston, gave us words and phrases including "doublethink," "big brother" and "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

Ricks shows how "kindred spirits" Churchill and Orwell had the toughness to fight to preserve the liberty of the individual – "the key question of the century" – first by seeking facts, then by acting on their beliefs and finally by writing down their thoughts for posterity.

Both were men of action who, "facing an existential threat then responded with caring and clear-sightedness."

In his conclusion Ricks asserts that their path leads to a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama and to the pen of Martin Luther King Jr. "King was arguing that in a world based on facts, in which the individual has the right to perceive and decide those facts on his or her own, the state must earn the allegiance of its citizens. When it fails to live up to its rhetoric, it begins to forfeit that loyalty. This is a thought at once profoundly revolutionary and very American."

Ricks's explanation of how Orwell and Churchill are relevant to MLK and the Civil Rights movement is an eyeopener and a call to action for truth, justice and reality in the face of lies, corruption and obfuscation.

"That struggle to see things as they are is perhaps the fundamental driver of Western civilization," Ricks concludes. Facts matter.