Table of Contents:
WHY I WRITE
THE SPIKE
A HANGING
BOOKSHOP MEMORIES
SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT
DOWN THE MINE
NORTH AND SOUTH
SPILLING THE SPANISH BEANS
MARRAKECH
BOYS- WEEKLIES AND FRANK RICHARDS-S REPLY
CHARLES DICKENS
CHARLES READE
INSIDE THE WHALE
THE ART OF DONALD MCGILL
THE LION AND THE UNICORN: SOCIALISM AND THE ENGLISH GENIUS
WELLS, HITLER AND THE WORLD STATE
LOOKING BACK ON THE SPANISH WAR
RUDYARD KIPLING
MARK TWAIN-THE LICENSED JESTER
POETRY AND THE MICROPHONE
W B YEATS
ARTHUR KOESTLER
BENEFIT OF CLERGY: SOME NOTES ON SALVADOR DALI
RAFFLES AND MISS BLANDISH
ANTISEMITISM IN BRITAIN
FREEDOM OF THE PARK
FUTURE OF A RUINED GERMANY
GOOD BAD BOOKS
IN DEFENCE OF P. G. WODEHOUSE
NONSENSE POETRY
NOTES ON NATIONALISM
REVENGE IS SOUR
THE SPORTING SPIRIT
YOU AND THE ATOMIC BOMB
A GOOD WORD FOR THE VICAR OF BRAY
A NICE CUP OF TEA
BOOKS VS. CIGARETTES
CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK REVIEWER
DECLINE OF THE ENGLISH MURDER
HOW THE POOR DIE
JAMES BURNHAM AND THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION
PLEASURE SPOTS
POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
POLITICS VS. LITERATURE: AN EXAMINATION OF GULLIVER-S TRAVELS
RIDING DOWN FROM BANGOR
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE COMMON TOAD
THE PREVENTION OF LITERATURE
LEAR, TOLSTOY AND THE FOOL
SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS
WRITERS AND LEVIATHAN
REFLECTIONS ON GANDHI
a selection from WHY I WRITE:
From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.
I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child-s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious-i.e. seriously intended-writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger had -chair-like teeth--a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake-s -Tiger, Tiger-. At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener. From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished -nature poems- in the Georgian style. I also attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.
However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to myself. Apart from school work, I wrote VERS D-OCCASION, semi-comic poems which I could turn out at what now seems to me astonishing speed-at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in imitation of Aristophanes, in about a week-and helped to edit a school magazines, both printed and in manuscript....
