Professor David Peimer
George Orwell and the Fatal Fascination with Fascism

Professor David Peimer - George Orwell and the Fatal Fascination with Fascism

- And hi, everybody, and hope everybody is well everywhere around the four parts of our little planet. So today we are going to dive straight into Mr. George Orwell, who, it’s quite complicated doing George Orwell because of, obviously, his iconic status as such a famous figure, writer, popular cult hero, serious writer, satirist, and the quite extraordinary life and fascinating life that he lived. And I suppose, I mean, it may sound a bit of a cliche, but in the end, after having thought quite hard about, you know, what’s really the way in that is a bit new and a bit maybe different than the traditional stuff, which we all know and we’ve all studied, whether it’s school or university, reading his two most famous novels, obviously, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm.” But what is something that really can obviously give us a way in for our times that endures and powerfully other than the sort of general headlines and captions phrases. And I think I really kind of keep coming back to the word, you know, the complexity and the contradictions of his life. And what I thought is, instead of going too much into detail with the two novels, which I’m sure everybody knows so well, I would rather look at the context of his life and his ideas about totalitarianism, his ideas and insights and contradictions in his own life that I think really speak to us today. So I’m going to focus on what I think are some of the most resonant insights from Orwell, and secondly, some aspects of his own life, which I think are, on the one hand, surprising, shocking, but also show him very much as a man of his times, in a sense, trying to get beyond it, but also caught up in it, in particular, his relationship with Jewish people in terms of his writing and how that evolved and developed, and also what became known as the list that he made for the British government and British Foreign Office.

But we’ll come onto that a little bit later. What I want to start with is Orwell the man, his times, and obviously, some of the main ideas that I think we can take from his writings that really speak to us for today, which, you know, his name is being bandied so much now, the sales of his books have rocketed. And, it’s just so much, obviously, back in, I wouldn’t say back in vogue, but I think back in profound interest. I think a couple of things that really stand out for me of Orwell as a thinker and how he’s influenced us today is obviously in relation to our understanding, and I think I’m going to use the word totalitarianism rather than the much more frequently bandied around word of authoritarianism or populism even or fascism. There’s something about that word totalitarian. It’s, being a lover of language myself, obviously, it’s on a matter peak. There’s something about the totality of state rule, of autocracy compared to, what we know today as democracy. And I’m going to begin with maybe a little bit surprising, going back to his own times, which one gleans from the diaries of Goebbels. And one of Goebbels’ main phrases was, well, if we use democracy to get into power, and I’m paraphrasing Goebbels, if we use democracy to get into power, we obviously then can change it completely. And one of Goebbels’s phrases that he uses so often in his diaries is, the great irony of democracy is that it gives the demagogue or the emerging authoritarian leadership, it gives him the tool, democracy gives the tools with which to destroy itself.

And that’s the phrase and the insight from Goebbels. So freedom of speech can be used against itself in democracy to destroy democracy. And, you know, so many things happening in the world today, and I don’t only want to refer to Trump or whoever else it’s on, but, you know, it’s an emerging force, again, in our times, as we know, where the very tool of freedom of speech, one of the absolute pillars of democracy can be used against itself to destroy itself, to destroy democracy. Without going into all the detail, it’s fairly obvious how that can work. And yet, without freedom of speech, what is there? With freedom of speech, there is going to be a built-in price to pay in the leg in it. And the vigilance that’s required to be aware of that. I think Orwell was absolutely aware of it in “Animal Farm,” “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” and so many of his other writings. The second idea that comes out so strongly from him is the use of the lie, you know, how powerful the lie is. Of course, Goebbels said, the more often the lie is repeated and the greater the lie, the better and the more chance it’ll obviously be believed. So, not to tell little lie, but the big lie in a society, you know, portrayed as truth. So the Ministry of Truth that he has in the novel, that Orwell has, you know, is obviously the ministry of propaganda. And what is truth? What is lie? The relativism of what is the truth, what is a lie, whose perspective, whose language, who’s telling it, who’s legally deciding and who isn’t comes across so strongly in Orwell. And we’re going way back to the ‘30s and the '40s in Orwell. The next idea is how history can be falsified and the truth altered. So not only half truths or bits of truth told, but how history itself can be falsified almost completely.

There’s always the wonderful image in Milan Kundera’s novel, “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,” one of the early images of the Soviet times going back to, you know, the Cold War era, how you can have pictures of leaders or pictures of certain individuals, and then those photographs, you know, suddenly you see the same photograph a week or two later, and so-and-so’s being erased from the photograph. And that’s enough. You don’t have to say they were actually imprisoned or killed. The next idea comes from an interview with Hitler by a German journalist in the mid-'30s, where he said, you know, and I’m taking from the translation here, Hitler says, “Well, I don’t need to nationalise the banks. Why? Because I nationalise the mind.” And I think that comes across so powerfully in Orwell, and I’m going to link it to an idea later. It wasn’t just one of Orwell’s great insights, which to me were not just about communism versus capitalism or the Stalinism versus Hitler fascism or Mussolini type fasc, et cetera. But actually it’s a battle of ideas and reality between freedom and tyranny, freedom and totalitarianism. And I think it’s a great insight of Orwell’s. Obviously, he’s using Stalinism as the image at “Animal Farm,” “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” And so, you know, but I think deeper inside it is that idea of freedom versus tyranny or authoritarianism or totalitarianism as opposed to only just using, you know, communism versus this, versus that, or fascism. It goes to a deeper question of, you know, the human, the democratic project and the society and how we choose to make our societies. It’s also, of course, the phrases, which come again and again in the novels. The party is always right. Everything must be changed from streets to statues.

Every little detail of human life needs to be changed. Not only the big pictures of a society, it’s all in the novels. And then, of course, one of Orwell’s great insights as well is, and I’m going to jump here to Mr. Albert Speer, you know, the guy got away with his serious lies. Where Speer was, after he was released from Spandau, prison, and was on a journey through the West and in America, he was speaking to a college audience. And one of the students said to him, “What do you think is the most important quality for a politician of today to have?” This, of course, is going back to the late '60s, early '70s with Speer. And Speer thought about it for a while and said, charisma. And it’s an interesting reply from this character, Mr. Speer, charisma. And I think going back to Roman times, whenever, now, our times, we cannot underestimate, and I’m going to show how Orwell goes into the idea of charisma or the fascinating leader, whatever words we want to use, it’s important. You know, Napoleon the Pig in “Animal Farm,” you know, and of course he puts it in the pig, but it’s, the name is Napoleon, the charismatic… So many of these qualities are there. I’m reminded of one of Vaclav Havel’s great plays, “The Garden Party,” probably his most well-known play where he has a character, Hugo, who plays chess with himself. So of course, he can never lose. And it’s the character who’s the opportunistic and ambitious driven character to go up the greasy pole of power no matter what. And you can’t lose. You’ve got to always play. If you’re going to play the game, play it only against yourself, everybody out there is an enemy or can potentially beat you.

And the spirit of satire is what that Havel wrote. And of course, you know, the Ministry of Plenty, Ministry of Propaganda versus the Ministry of Truth, you know, what one sees as truth, the other as propaganda, you know, et cetera. I think Kafka saw it all. I think Kafka goes deep into the existential, the psyche of individuals and the psyche of it without even using any of the names of totalitarianism, democracy, et cetera. But that’s coming into the same questions from a very different point of view, a literary metaphorical point of view, more psychological than Orwell, who’s coming in more, I think, from a sociological point of view. And of course, occupation is freedom, truth is lie, propaganda is information. All of these ways of using language, which are so important in our times for many reasons, which, we don’t have time to go into now. War is peace. Peace is war. Not war and peace, but war is peace and vice versa. Plenty is shortage, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. All this playing with language to completely falsify and twist any singular meaning is so important. In the end, I think, what Orwell is pushing in the books is that thinking itself becomes blurred. Thinking itself becomes a sports field for blurred phrases, images. We are not quite sure, is this the meaning? Is that the meaning? And we get exhausted trying to figure out what is actually the meaning, because our attention is being grabbed left or right and centre, you know? And so thinking itself becomes blurred, and thus loses certain amount of meaning. The individual finds it harder to think for him or herself. And thus that leads to an exhaustion, to an agreement to lies, absurd, whatever the leader says may be true or not true. Black can be white, white can be black, blue can be red, red can be, et cetera. The blurring of it takes place. And that’s the danger to democracy, the danger to education and so many other ways, which so many people have fought and died for over centuries, aeons. It’s the big lie. How is that actually messaged to use contemporary jargon? But how’s it messaged? How’s it mediated to people today?

And I think, you know, that Orwell in the end thought that he can’t stand aside in this battle. And as he says, “Every line of serious work I’ve written since '36, it’s written against totalitarianism.” I think, his ultimate insight is that regardless of the economic system, regardless of what others may call it or phrase it, it’s actually freedom versus totalitarianism in the end. That may sound simplistic to some, but I think it’s not, I think it’s actually deeper than the obvious phrases of, you know, this religious rule or this economic system. It’s something that strikes a chord which goes deeper. Okay, the many pictures, the many images of George Orwell, who’d died young, of course, can see 47, and the huge amount that he achieved by this stage of his life. Going to look primarily “Animal Farm” that just start at the bottom, “The Road to Wigan Pier” is one of his really important works. And Wigan is not far from me here in Liverpool. It’s about half an hour’s drive away, you know, and it’s really a very, you know, quite a tough working class city, town, if you like, and doesn’t have much of economic growth. And, you know, it’s a tough, hard life in terms of the first world that people are living in there. And when he went there to see it, I think he got a shock and it made him very aware of the post-industrial, what for his time was industrial, northern parts of England. And to write about it, to try and understand it from that point of view, 1937. Then of course, the most important, I think, the most important influence on his life was the Spanish Civil War. No question. '36 to '39 primarily. And going there, being shot in the throat with a sniper’s bullet, suffering afterwards, health, everything, together with tuberculosis. But I think that is the defining experience of Orwell’s.

And then afterwards, of course, comes “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm,” the two really great novels that he’s so well known for today. This is the home in England where his family lived, and he obviously is coming from an upper middle class family of the times. And his father worked in the Opium Department of the civil service in India overseeing the production of opium for sale to China. And his father was primarily in India and he himself, and so his father was quite a high up or senior official in the civil service of the empire. And working in these ways, obviously, Orwell gets to experience, understand ideas about empire, and I think that’s really important that he’s living at the time of empire, and of course, the two wars, and in particular the '30s Spanish War and the Second World War. So he himself was born in India, Orwell, educated in England. He came to school here when he was very young, only rarely got to know his father much more when he was 12 years old. So quite a big leap between him and his father and the way of living for foreign office officials of Empire times. He writes, of course, the great satire “Animal Farm,” “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in those dates that I mentioned. He then became an imperial policeman in Burma, Myanmar today. So he becomes a very, quite a senior policeman in Burma. And then, of course, returns to live in England after that. His mother grew up in Burma as part of foreign office or empire civil, you know, and married the daughter of another foreign office civil servant. Brought up much more by his mother and only really got to know his father, as I said, around 1912 onwards.

He was sent to a convent school in Henley-on-Thames. So just to paint a picture of his background, 'cause I think it’s important, it’s very much dictated by being part of almost the elite in empire times. This year is a poem that he wrote when he was 11 years old, and of course we all know his original name was Eric Blair, “Awake: Young Men of England,” this is around the time of the First World War. And it says here, this is the poem, the following verses were composed and written by master Eric Blair, the 11 year old son of Mr. R.W. Blair of Roselawn, et cetera, et cetera. Oh! give me the strength of the Lion The wisdom of Reynard the Fox, and so on and so on. And then I’ll hurl troops at the Germans And give them the hardest of knocks. Oh! think of the War lord’s mailed fist. This is an 11 year old writing a poem, which is published. It gives us a sense of his context, I think. Again, the son of an empire official, quite senior, he’s in charge of the opium trade, which is huge, you know, between India and China, selling it to India. And so it very important position economically and politically. That’s where he’s coming from. And he’s imbued with, awake, young men of England, First World War stuff. Of course, he later grows to, in his own words, hate the empire, to hate what it’s produced, what it’s doing. But this upbringing is too strong, I think. And I think that he remains unsettled, disturbed by the constant set of contradictions in his own personal life and the way that he lived. He then joined, Orwell joins the Indian Police Service, and he’s actually in charge, he later goes to Burma, and he’s put in charge of over 200,000 people. That’s a hell of a lot. One person, the son of an empire civil servant, he becomes an empire senior, fairly senior Empire policeman himself, who’s responsible for 200,000 people. That’s a serious, serious job and position, you know, before he goes back to England and becomes a writer and many other things, et cetera. So all of this are the contradictions of the times that he’s living.

And we have to, I think, really imagine these times of empire that he’s living in and connected, you know, to different aspects of our times. He’s, of course… This year, by the way, is a picture of the river Orwell in Suffolk, because, you know, he wanted to change. He didn’t think the name Eric Blair was going to be a writer’s name that he could sell, really. So he changes. George Orwell, names it after the River Orwell in Suffolk. And George, he gets, and it takes the name George, because the patron saint of England. So puts the two together, that’s what we have here. Here’s a picture of the river with grey English skies, of course. He is wounded. What’s really important is that he’s wounded, as I said before, in the Spanish Civil War. That to me is from my personal understanding, the most important part of his life. He goes there to fight, he goes there believing, you know, there’s been communism, there’s capitalism, all these different things have been happening. This is before his two great books are written, “Animal Farm” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” And he goes to fight in it with all the beliefs and idealism, as many, many did, you know, of the international brigade in Spain and so on. And he’s wounded, as I said, a sniper’s bullet hits him in the throat. And ever since then, ever since that time, obviously his speaking, he’s lucky to survive. But his ability to speak and his way of speaking is all, and the pain that he’s living with physically, later, of course, gets tuberculosis. So he’s beset with ill health constantly. The Second World War, he works as a journalist for the BBC primarily. This is a square that’s named after him in Barcelona.

The 1945 publication of “Animal Farm,” finally in 1945, enables him to be financially more than stable and gives him global fame in his own lifetime. And then in the last final years of his short life, he was working on “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and finished it just before he died. Let’s just think of Orwell’s contribution to popular culture and where he is iconic in popular imagination. Orwellian. And it’s, again, everything is about the totalitarian system. And that word that he uses that I showed at the beginning, I think he chooses very carefully. He’s thought through communism, fascism, all the isms, the powerful isms of his times to see similarities and differences. Look how much has become part of the English language. Phrases like Big Brother, thought police, Newspeak, double think, thought crime. And we can go on and on. It’s all from Orwell. And it’s remarkable that a writer can make up new words, new phrases that become part of our, you know, today, everywhere, all the time. So many people who haven’t even read Orwell, but just know these phrases. And he’s seeing this in the '30s and '40s, you know, he’s seeing this 89, 90 years ago and coming up with all these phrases. I think it’s incredibly insightful, and I would say almost prophetic of him in a way to really understand and not be naive about it.

Going back to when he was the senior policeman in Burma, he wrote this, and I think this is an important phrase, which is from one of his letters about the hostility that he received from the Burmese people, and I’m quoting, “I was stuck between my hatred of the British empire, which I served, and my rage against the evil spirited little beasts, the Burmese who tried to make my job impossible.” He’s constantly aware of contradictions that he’s experiencing in daily life. And he talks about, these are his words, his hatred of the empire, but also the rage he feels against the people he’s trying to help, or not help, he’s a policeman authority, not… It’s imbued with contradiction. It’s imbued with ambivalence. And I think so much of his life is that. The one area of such clarity when he digs through these words of communism and others, he digs it right into totalitarianism or freedom that is ancient as humankind itself. And that’s the warning of the books, that’s the vigilance and the awareness of the books. He first goes into, one of his very important books is called “Down and Out in Paris in London,” which is an early book. He tried to get it published by Faber & Faber. T. S. Eliot was the editor in chief, the editor of new writers at the time, and he rejected. And in 1932, he became a teacher in West London. He attended meetings of the Communist Party. He attended meetings of Oswald Mosley and the British fascists. And he wrote this about Mosley, “His speech is full of the usual cap trap. Mosley blamed everything upon mysterious international gangs of Jews.”

It’s so obvious why. He’s understanding it. He’s trying to get inside the minds of these individuals and the minds of what’s happening with the fascist party or fascist groups in England, even at the time. He develops what becomes known today, I guess, as a political conscience. And of course “The Road to Wigan Pier,” going living in Wigan helped him with that, to understand it. Now, what’s interesting, and not many people know this, is that after he wrote “The Road to Wigan Pier,” which is really his first important novel or book, the British Special Branch from 1936 onwards, because, obviously, he went to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republicans and the Communists. So in 1936, the British Special Branch put him under what was called special surveillance for 12 years. 1936 to 1948 He’s under special surveillance, because of that book and because of, is he communist? Because he’s pro the Democrats and the Republicans, who also allied, of course, to the communists in the Spanish Civil War against the fascists. Many of the British aristocratic elite, or quite a few, or some are pro Franco, some are against pro.

We all know those debates, you know, and it’s played out in so many ways later when the Second World War was close to beginning, He goes to Spain in '36, and it’s interesting, he had a dinner with Henry Miller, and on the way, and Henry Miller said to him, and I’m quoting here, “Your ideas about combating fascism and defending democracy are a bunch of baloney.” You can imagine almost these guys, Henry Miller and Orwell having this conversation over some drinks or whatever in Paris, et cetera. But it’s showing, I want to show his connection to the literary figures also of the times, 'cause that’s important. And now they caught up, in a sense in a spider’s web, of supporting this side or that side, feeling the need to support this side or that politically by trying to write, trying to make art. Is Picasso there? All of these are happening at the time, of course, in Paris. He stayed in Lenin barracks in Barcelona. Of course, you know, the Lenin Barracks, what else would it be in Barcelona? He’s shocked by the shortage of ammunition, shortage of food. But what he’s most shocked by is the endless factional in fighting. And of course he’s wounded, but he sees, he starts to see what Stalinist Russia is really all about. He starts to develop a real anger at naive intellectuals from the West, at so many people who are so, almost, I would say in today’s phrase, armchair combatants, if you like. But he starts to get a real understanding of what’s really going on in the Spanish Civil War. Moving, jumping forward a little bit to the Second World War. During the Battle of Britain, he became very friendly with the publisher Warburg and his Jewish and Zionist friend, Tosco Fyvel, excuse me if I’m pronouncing it wrong, Fyvel, Fyvel he’s a very important friend, Tosco Fyvel. And we can see, and Orwell rights in 1941, “One could not have a better example of the moral and emotional shallowness of our times than the fact that we are now all more or less pro Stalin. This disgusting murderer is temporarily on our side.

And so the purges are suddenly forgotten.” And this is 1941, after Stalin, of course, after Russia’s been attacked by Hitler and the Germans, he’s writing this in 1941, “temporarily on our side, this disgusting murderer. We are all more or less pro Stalin.” He has no illusions. And I think this is very important. We have to really imagine these times that he’s living. In 1941, he does BBC broadcasts to India to counter the propaganda of the Germans, because the Germans, of course are dreaming, they’re going to go not only from Russia, but they might go into India and they’re really going to take over the world and they’re going to destroy the British Empire, et cetera. So he’s employed by the BBC to give broadcast to India, pro Empire, pro Britain against Germany, and write articles. 1944, “Animal Farm.” Many publishers refused to publish it. When you think back on it today, it’s quite extraordinary, because it was seen as an attack on the Soviet regime at a time when Soviet Russia, the Soviet Union, was a crucial ally in the war. So the publishers were scared, “Uh-uh, we don’t want to touch it.” Fascinating when one delves into the truth of what really happened. And other publishers, and it’s possibly one of the main reasons why T.S. Eliot at Faber & Faber refused to let Faber & Faber publish it. Finally, it was published in 1945. He then eventually goes into hospital and he died under the anaesthetic. 1994, “Animal Farm” had, and I think a very clear resonance, you know, we get it after the war and we get as more and more of the truth of the show trials and more and more of the truth of communist Russia comes out.

And of course, can be linked to parts of Nazi Germany. And then there’s Orwell’s list, which I’m going to come to a little bit later in the talk today, which was finally released by the British government in 2003. Very important. These two novels obviously reflect aspects of the Russian revolution, post, the Soviet Union and the Communist Empire, post Russian revolution. Obviously that in the rise of Stalinism, obviously that’s a crucial part in the novels, but it’s really life under totalitarian rule and how it can be seen to come about there and why not in the West? Why not in various other countries as well? That’s why, again, he goes away and it’s so important from the word communism to the word totalitarianism, the complete control over every aspect of life. 2021, readers from the New York Times book review rated “Nineteen Eighty-Four” as third most important book in the Best Books category of the last 125 years. That’s pretty high. It’s over a century of literature. And it’s number three. The impact as a popular and cultural icon, which is what I’m trying to get to grips with today, cannot be underestimated. He admired Arthur Koestler, we all know he became a close friend, “Darkness at Noon,” a brilliant, brilliant book, “Darkness at Noon.” And he saw as a piece of not only, he saw it as a brilliant piece of literature not only as an interpretation of what was going on in these totalitarian countries of the times, a frightening image. And he wrote, and this is from Koestler, he wrote, “What was frightening about these trials was not only the fact that they happened,” the show trials in Russia, “was not only the fact that they happened, but the eagerness of Western intellectuals to justify them.” And I think it’s important because it shows Orwell was not scared to look at the group that he belonged to and say, “Uh-uh, you’ve got rose-tinted glasses on, you’re not seeing the truth as it really is. see it, what’s really going on. Cut the naive illusions.”

Interestingly, in 1946, he was commissioned by the British Council to write a book on British cookery. And he writes on everything on so much, the British diet was, and I’m quoting, “a simple, rather heavy, slightly barbarous diet where hot drinks are acceptable at most hours of the day.” It’s that way of putting together language that makes us think and reflect. He wanted to get out of the blurring, that language blurs reality, language is used to blur truth from lie, and trying to find a new way of putting words together, and yet can be simple enough, not simplistic, simple enough to communicate to anybody, educated, uneducated, doesn’t matter. And he wrote, of course, that “high teas in England had to include at least one cake, as cakes and biscuits are much eaten at tea-time and part of civilization.” And of course, he’s being ironic and he’s being satirical, but there’s also something in it as well. He was seen as an enemy of the left. He was seen as an enemy of the right. He was put under surveillance, but he’s also asked to speak out against the Germans who might invade India. They used his background. He doesn’t fit into any easy category. That to me is what makes him even more fascinating when you really dig into these novels to understand, he’s not a simple didactic polemic at all. And as he wrote about, if it’s against totalitarianism, which is a control of the mind, it’s a nationalising of the mind first before a nationalising of the economy, a nationalising of the space where people live, where they can live, where they can’t do, who they can marry, who’s an immigrant, who isn’t, et cetera. It’s to nationalise the mind. He understands, totalitarianism happens between our ears first, I think, so powerfully. And he wrote about the importance, in 1946, he has these fantastic essays about the importance of precise clear language, arguing that vague blurring language can be used as a powerful tool of political manipulation, because obviously it shapes the way we think, language and thought together.

Again, all the time trying to, if you like, part the curtains from the stage of language itself. So important, because that’s what creates the blurring, which creates the confusion, and so people will gravitate to the security of totalitarian and the leader. The control of propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, denial of truth, manipulation of history, manipulation of memory and the past. All these things which are so prevalent for his times and our times. It’s you control. And that’s why the idea of thought control is so important in the book “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” because control thought through controlling language and you control the mind, you don’t even need so many guns in the end. Words and phrases that have entered into our language, and a whole lot of them which are mentioned already. And we are not clear, but from research done by quite a lot of people, he was the first to use the term Cold War after World War II. And he spoke about a state in a permanent state of a cold war with its neighbours, whether it was from somebody else or not, but there’s a lot of research which shows he came up with that phrase, but that’s open to some debate. He was anti-colonialism. He portrayed English colonists, and I’m quoting, as “a dull, decent people cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets.” It said, way of putting words together, which just punches you in the gut afterwards, yes, they dull, but they’re decent. Let’s never forget they’ve got a quarter of a million… Yeah, it’s bayonets. He always is putting together the complexity of history and his own times to understand totalitarianism. He talked about, a quoting again, the extraordinary and illogical censorship of literature in Britain of his times.

And he tried to understand what he called the Puritan middle class who had stricter morals than the aristocracy. So he is not scared to go straight what he thinks is at the heart of this puritan ethic, if you like, in his own country. He wrote about the British colonial government in Burma and India. He writes, “The government of the Indian provinces under the British Empire is of necessity, despotic, because only the threat of force can really subdue millions. But this despotism hides behind a mask of democracy” and decency. But its aim is to stop India becoming an industrial country capable of competing with England. Foreign competition is prevented by prohibitive customs tariffs. And so the English factory owners with nothing to fear control the markets and reap the profits. For me, what’s interesting is the insight, but also the how he’s trying to put the language together to give us that punch at the end with the insight that he wants to share for him. It’s always, what is the lie, describe it and then pull the curtain away and show the truth, from his perspective, of course. And he wrote about the Spanish Civil War. We know there’s a lot of that. Now, what’s really interesting is that in 1940, he wrote a review of “Mein Kampf” trying to understand, you know, Hitler’s psychology. And he writes, “what strikes me the most is the rigidity of the mind of Adolf Hitler. His worldview does not develop. It is the fixed vision of a monomaniac.” And it’s a different way in from many of the, let’s call it more popular phrases used about Hitler.

He goes deeper, “Why was Hitler worshipped so much by the German people?” He asks himself and, and he writes, “Germany had 7 million unemployed. It was obviously favourable for demagogues, but Hitler could not have succeeded against rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality. You can feel this even in the clumsy writing of "Mein Kampf” and is overwhelming when you hear his speeches. The fact that there is something deeply appealing about Hitler. What is the cause of his grievance against the universe? It can only be guessed at. But there is grievance here, and grievance is important to the masses. Hitler portrays himself,“ and I’m quoting, and this to me is a really helpful, insightful part, "Hitler portrays himself as the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fight single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse, Hitler would know how to make it seem like a dragon.” I think there is something in this, which goes back to Shakespeare’s phrase about the charisma, Napoleon the Pig in “Animal Farm” and so on. It’s something about the martyr, the victim who ironically the terrible, tragic, horrific irony of human history becomes the great leader, the demagogue, the godforsaken Fuhrer who’s actually portrayed as a martyr and a victim. I mean, that extraordinary leap in the human mind, and Orwell tries to go to the depth to understand it. And I like the way he writes to try and get the insights of his own thinking through. Again, he’s not prepared to, if he’s going to try and find the truth on the stage of language, he’s not going to allow himself to be fuzzy minded or blurry. And then of course, there’s his essay in 1945 of antisemitism in Britain, which I’ll come onto. But he writes in 1945, finally that antisemitism is on the increase in Britain. “It is irrational and therefore will not yield to arguments.” He gets it. There is no rationality behind antisemitism. “It will not yield to arguments.” How can one use arguments against something that is irrational? He gets it. I think, you know, in terms of antisemitism. He writes, “For six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. Many English have heard almost nothing about the extermination of Jews during the war.”

And this is in 1945, his essay on antisemitism in Britain, he goes on to say, this is Orwell writing, “It is these English, their own antisemitism that is caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness,” bounce off their consciousness. He’s not scared to go to talk to his own class, his own group in a way, which is the upper class or upper middle class, the semi elite of England, intellectual thinkers, writers. And in that way, he’s risking himself, he’s risking huge stuff for himself as a person and an individual. Christopher Hitchens, who I really liked, you know, one of the really, I think intelligent, I suppose we’d call him today a public intellectual, but intellectual from England, he wrote the book “Why Orwell Matters.” He describes Orwell, I think really as a non-conformist. And I think that word is often, you know, bandied around, but I think it’s important. “Nonconformist of the mind who resolutely faces up to unpleasant truths,” in Hitchens’s phrase, “resolutely faced up to unpleasant truths.” Important. You know, he goes on, Hitchens, about propaganda and knowing all the different aspects, some of which I’ve spoken about already. It’s this ability of George Orwell to hear, and Hitchens goes into it, the power of facing unpleasant facts. The power of facing unpleasant truths. These are a couple of phrases that Orwell used about writing. “Never use a metaphor,” which are used to seeing in print, or figure of speech. “Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it’s possible to cut a word out, cut it, always less is more,” and so on. For those of us who love writing, three little simple rules, but very important. And the power to face unpleasant facts, which sounds easy to write, much harder being George Orwell of his own times under surveillance and living the life.

I think that these ideas for me are, I’ll just say evocative, for our times. In terms of his attitude to Jewish people, it’s starts out, I think, pretty antisemitic. In his first book “Down and Out in Paris and London,” 1933, I’m just going to give a couple of quotes from the book, we don’t need to go into it in too much detail. “The shopman was a red-haired Jew, a disagreeable man. It would’ve been a pleasure to flatten the Jew’s nose if only one could have afforded it.” Another quote, “Have I ever told you that it was considered bad form to spit on a Jew? Yes, we thought a Russian officer’s spittle was too precious to be wasted on a Jew. In the corner by himself sits the Jew, muzzled down in his plate, guiltily wolfing bacon.” This is to give you one example of a book he wrote in 1933, “Down and Out in Paris and London,” before all the other books come, we compare “Animal Farm,” “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” And it’s important because we have to see a complete anti-Semite obviously here, you know, in this writing together with many others. He also wrote, “The Old Testament is filled with hatred and self-righteousness. No duty towards foreigners is recognised. Jehovah is a tribal deity of the worst type.” In the 1930s, he was friendly, of course, with his own publisher, Victor Gollancz, Fred Warburg, Jewish, writers, Arthur Koestler and others, Jewish. Antisemitism, of course, was the norm in England at the time. Why should we be so surprised? It’s the norm, not only in England, but in Europe of the times. It’s no different from many other 19th century English novelists, George Eliot, the complete exception, “Daniel Deronda.” But fundamentally anti-Jewish, J. B. Priestley, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Elliot and so on. And we cannot ever get away, I think, from the Einstein quote about his great friend that he suffered from the tragedy of the German Jew, which is the tragedy of unrequited love. Einstein saw it completely.

And he’s part of this milieu that’s prevailing at the time, not only in England, but in the whole of Europe and other parts of the world as well. He’s also very friendly with Tosco Fyvel, who became a co-editor of the wartime Searchlight Books, with him, with Orwell, and Tosco Fyvel confronts him about his anti-Semitism, and he pushes Orwell to rethink it. And in 1942, in a BBC broadcast in 1942, he says that Orwell finally speaks of the horror of the murder of a million Polish Jews, 1942. And Orwell wrote in '42, “Antisemitism is not the doctrine of a grownup person. People who go in for that kind of thing must take the consequences.” Two very important articles that he wrote in 1944, where he attacks anti-Semites and he expresses his bewilderment at the longevity of the prejudice against the Jewish people. His words. Orwell in his last piece was the '45 one, he showed that he tried to evolve his own thinking, and because in the novel, in “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” Goldstein, of course, is Jewish, and he writes, in “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” “Goldstein had a lean Jewish face with great fuzzy white hair, a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with the long thin nose. It resembled the face of a sheep. And the voice too had a sheep-like quality. Well, why is it necessary to say your character is Goldstein and obviously, you know, using a Jewish name? You know, "had a lean Jewish face.” You don’t get people writing and saying he had a Christian face or a Hindu face or a Protestant or a Catholic, but whatever.

Go on and on. And Tosco Fyvel, his co-edit, and Fred close friend, he’s Jewish, confronts him, “Why did he use the name Goldstein?” And Orwell wrote to him in a letter, , “Because this is the rebel against Big Brother and the Party in the novel.” And Orwell said, “It’s obviously a reference to Trotsky,” Jewish, but he also writes that the man who would most likely revolt against a totalitarian regime would be a Jewish intellectual. So is it simple antisemitism? Is it a complex antisemitism? I think it’s complicated in his own mind because if you’re going to get a freedom fighter to revolt, it’s going to be a Jewish intellectual, but at the same time, he’s got to lean Jewish, et cetera, et cetera. And these other things he’s written. I think contradictions is the essence to George Orwell. He was stunned at the horrors of the Holocaust. He wrote to full support, full entry of all Jewish refugees into Britain after the war, which of course, Britain blocked. But yet he was against Zionism, and he wrote, because he said he wrote to Tosco Fyvel, it was a form of nationalism and he was against it. He saw, and Fyvel finally wrote and trying to understand his friend Orwell, that Orwell saw Zionists as the Jewish equivalent of white settlers, like the British in India or Burma and other parts of the world. It’s coming back to what I said right at the beginning, he’s part of his milieu, he’s part of his age, empire, Britain. And he’s caught in that conflict of hatred for it, empire in his own words, that word hate, but also not exactly in love with the people who have been conquered at all.

So he’s caught constantly on a tightrope between contradictions in trying to find out his own truth. And I think that Tosco Fyvel gets it when he says he saw Zionists as nationalists and the equivalent of the British white settlers of empire. Pardon, I mean like the British in India or Burma. In the end, he is a man of his times. But he was able to evolve his thinking at least partly on antisemitism. He was able to evolve his thinking against the popular armchair intellectuals and leftists of his own times, and see what was the truth happening in Stalinist Soviet Union. He was able to understand that important difference what really is totalitarianism, what really is freedom, how do these things really work. The last thing to share with everyone is the list. And in 1949, the British Foreign Office, so this is just a few years after they’ve stopped keeping him under surveillance, and we don’t actually know if he knew or not. Anyway, he was asked in 1949 to make a list of writers and others, he was asked by the British Foreign Office, to make a list of writers and others who he thought would be unsuitable to help write anti-communist and anti-Soviet Union propaganda. It was called the Information Research Department, which was a secret organisation in the British Foreign Office, Information Research Department. It was dedicated to disinformation warfare, obviously anti-communism, pro-colonial work.

And it had been created in the late '40s after the war by Clement Attlee’s labour government. It became the largest wing of the Foreign Office and the longest running covert government department in British history in the foreign office. And he wrote the list of names of those he thought would be sympathetic, at least, to Stalinism. This is important, Stephen Spender, he called a sentimental sympathiser, the poet and critic, Stephen Spender. He put on the list Charlie Chaplin, Katharine Hepburn, George Bernard Shaw, John Steinbeck, Orson Welles, and the list goes on and on. So I come back, of course, he was an ex-colonial senior policeman in Burma. He was part of empire, he was part of his times. So I try to create a picture to understand him, and therefore the novels as opposed to revisiting how we all read him at school or university or wherever. It’s this overall picture of a man of his times full of the contradictions, but he leaves us a legacy, I really do think, not only in populist global icon, an iconic figure, but to try to really distinguish in a relentless way, as Christopher Hitchens argues, what is truth and what is lie. Try to open the curtain, to use my own metaphor again, on the stage of language to see how is language rarely creating thought, because if you control language you control thought, and you can put into people’s minds whatever you want. And it’s so obvious in our time of mass media and the internet, you know, et cetera.

It’s kind of an obvious connection, that connection. But he was the first. And he sought on a grand social scale, societal in his own times and tried to foresee what was to come in the future. I think that there are so many fascinating contradictions of being human and all too human. And at the same time, we have these amazing two novels and “The Road to Wigan Pier,” three, which we can come back to, I read, you know, go back again and again and again. And it never fails to shock that in these fairly shortish novels, a writer can come up with so many of these ideas, words, insights, you know, to write satire, which are obviously in all like all satires, great humour, dark humour, and great punches of insight into our own times and his own time, of course. Okay. Lastly, something of fun. After everything that he wrote about the English, let’s never forget that he was a satirist as well. “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm” are meant to be satires. They’re meant to be dark comedies.

On the English, “We are a nation of flower-lovers, stamp-collectors, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans.” Look how specific it is and witty. The culture centres round things which are not official, the pub, the football match, the back garden, 'nice cup of tea.’ The liberty of the individual is still believed in. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit remains. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements and not having chosen for you from above.“ Goes on, 11 rules for making tea, it’s in an essay, called "A Nice Cup of Tea.” “Tea is one of the mainstays of civilization in this country. Causes violent disputes of how it should be made.” We can’t forget that he is a satirist and there’s wit and humour inside all the other ideas that I mentioned already. And I think it’s another insight that the liberty of the individuals not only believed in, but it takes place outside of the official areas of work, and officialdom and government, flowers, stamps, carpentry, coupons, crossword and so on. And I think it rings true. Okay, I’m going to hold it all here and we can go on to questions.

Q&A and Comments:

From Lorraine, hi. Okay. I’m not sure, Lorraine.

Dawn, “Shana tova,” thank you. And to everybody as well for a meaningful fast. Thank you very much, Dawn.

Brandy. “Your first few minutes can be explained for what is happening here under Mr. Trump.” Yep. But I think the danger of Trump is, you know, taking aside everything else, is how it is believed, the lie, so many of the ideas go back to Orwell and Goebbels. I’m not saying Trump has ever read any of these things, but others who’ve advised him, possibly, you know, but how the lie can work, and grievance, this idea that Orwell talks about, the grievance idea, that actually he’s a victim, Trump, like everybody else and speaks to the grievance of the victim. But of course he ain’t. Myrna. Thank you.

Q: Susan. “How AI will change everything? How careful we must be?”

A: Yep. And we just had a lecture in the university on how to apply AI. But that’s a whole separate story.

Alice, “Why did he write under the name George Orwell?”

Well, I think, as I mentioned, he thought Eric Blair would not be a very popular name or taken seriously as a writer, I dunno, his own insecurities. He liked the name of the river Orwell, and George as the patron saint.

Robin, Orwell wrote “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in 1940 in a farmhouse in Scotland. Yes, very much so. “Friends of mine owned this house.” That’s amazing, Robin. “Which I was treated to frosty bath in Orwell’s tub just a week before 9/11.” God. “The house is called Barnhill.” Thanks so much, Robin. That’s fascinating. Yeah, he went to this tiny little, this farmhouse on a very isolated Scottish island of Durham where he completed the writing of “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” Thanks so much for that, Robin. This is what I love about lockdown. We are all so connected and ideas and life experiences to share. Extraordinary. What Wendy and set up with Trudy.

Rita, “David, excellent documentary on Orwell.” Ah, “George Orwell, a Warning to Mankind.” Yes, I’ve seen it. It’s really good. Thanks, Rita, for that.

Q: Lorna, “My question is, did Orwell..?”

A: Yes, he did go to Eton and it had some effect. He went to Eton eventually and some impact on his feeling of elitism, even though he poked at it, yeah, exactly. He was, as somebody said about Harold Pinter, he was the nuisance or he was the thorn. And of course, so many of them did go to Eton or to some of the other elite schools, not D.H. Lawrence, but many of the others. So they knew from the inside how the system worked. But for me, is that they had the courage to write about it and were caught in that web between being of the inside, understanding and writing about it, maybe dreaming or imagining that can be outside, but not really. Thanks, Lauren. It’s a great point.

Ed, “Growing up in apartheid South Africa was an experience in an Orwellian…” Exactly. Couldn’t agree more with you, Ed. up in Apartheid, that was absolutely Orwellian. I’m sure we’ve got so many stories to share. Great, thanks.

“The communist meant a terrible criminal, sex with another race, crime, Black person, not entitled exactly to human rights and so on. And Japanese at human rights. Like you’re…” Exactly, again, it’s our language packages thought. Yeah, which we obviously knew in South Africa.

“Yiddish was declared a non-European language.” Yes.

“To keep refugees banned from the country.” Yes, exactly. And many other examples in Apartheid South Africa, which I’m sure some of us will get onto in regard to the South African section, which I know Wendy and Trudy and Dennis and others have been working hard on as well.

Q: Myrna, “Did Orwell meet Hemmingway?”

A: Great question, Myrna. I don’t know, but I’m going to look, I’m going to research it straight after. Thanks. I really appreciate that. That’s a wonderful thought.

“Hello, in my American high school experience in the ‘50s, 'Animal Farm’ and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four,’ I’m with , ‘Darkness at Noon,’ we were parts of our antique, Soviet literary education.” Yep.

“But there was no literature critical of McCarthyism.” Exactly. Or the overthrow democratic regimes, yeah. And that’s a great point, Hilal, and I think education can be used, you know, there’s the brilliant post British post-colonial theorist called Gilroy who has the phrase of “Education in our times is how to groom ignorance.” And I’ll leave you with that in how ignorance can be groomed through using the tools of education in democracies. And that’s an example. It’s happening out there. It’s happening in “Animal Farm,” it’s happening in Soviet Russia and elsewhere. It can’t be happening in McCarthyism or in our own backyard.

Robin, “One of Orwell’s early writings about totalitarianism came out of experience.” Yes.

“Homage to Catalonia.” Yeah, exactly. Wonderful to read that. Thanks, Robin.

Dennis. “I strongly recommend, as you’re mentioning here, his book about his experience of the Spanish Civil War, ‘Homage to Catalonia.’” Yeah. Very, very powerful. And in fact, I was watching some of Picassos, looking at some of Picasso’s again. Anyway, that whole separate thing we can get into. Thanks, Dennis.

Judy. Thanks, very kind.

Rita, “This is the Orwell Society is a membership organisation.” Yep. With a charitable purpose. Great. Thank you so much. And the society’s patron is his son, yeah.

Richard Blair. Thank you.

John, “I read somewhere that on the way back from Spain, he passed through Paris and met Hemmingway. Asked him to provide him with a revolver to protect himself from Soviet agents who out to assassinate him.” That could be a fascinating story. Or a movie actually. That’s really interesting, John. You know, I’m going to find out more about it. Thank you.

Rita… Sorry, Nema. “Why I Write” George Orwell. Yes. Great ideas. Nema telling great little book by a prophetic writer. Yep. Joel, thank you very kindly.

Q: Betty, “Doesn’t Trump set himself as a victim?” Yes. And act the poor martyr?

A: Yes. You know, you can be the billionaire, it doesn’t matter. It’s how you put, you understand the communication technology of the times, whether it’s books or radio or TV or internet, whatever, or the camera or satellites, phones. It’s that insight, for me, what is so brilliant was that insight of Orwell’s into Hitler, that it’s a mind. Trump is a book of grievance, and speaking to the grievance of 7 million unemployed Germans and millions and millions of others, and speaks today. And if you set yourself, and what he is really saying is to set yourself up as a totalitarian leader, you can use the tools of the psychology of grievance and victimhood, and appeal to that in the mass psychology. Yeah, it’s fascinating, Orwell’s insight. Thanks, Betty. That’s fantastic.

Anne, “Each new Orwell phrase that you quote about lies uttered in blurred language describes Trump and his mysterious appeal.” Yeah. I think when we understand, Anne, as you’re saying, we understand the Orwellian and there are lies and Goebbels and use the tools of democracy to destroy it, you know, freedom of speech, the blurred language, but also it’s this idea of grievance and the psychology of victimhood. I think it can be underestimated how powerful it really is in the age of of media.

Q: Ralph, “Did Orwell comment on the opium trade?”

A: That’s a fascinating question, Ralph. I don’t know. Have to check. He certainly understood the economics of empire, and what I always thought was brilliant about the British Empire, they understood that it began with trade really, and kept trade going all the way through. You know, the point is to get rich at home. The point of having an empire is not only to conquer A, B or C territories, peoples, but get rich in the homeland, of course.

Susan, “We miss Chris Hitchens.” Yeah, I agree.

Q: Nikki, “Did Orwell and have any contact with each other?”

A: Not sure, need to check that. Thanks for that, Nikki.

David, “I think he’s yours as a pupil in Eton was a major influence.” Yes. On the British establishment in empire. Absolutely. Rita, thank you. Ralph, thank you.

Q: “Did Orwell ever express his regrets?”

A: I think that with his friend Tosco Fyvel and others, I don’t know if the word would be regret. It’s a great question, Ralph. I think you would see it as a less blurring of thinking to get it more clearly and certainly seeing or understanding from 1942 onwards what was happening in Europe and the Holocaust and speaking about it on the BBC, I think, he certainly starts or does change.

Q: Devorah, “Was he a misogynist?”

A: I’m not sure. I don’t know that. We’d have to research that.

Barbara, “The most disturbing time in the world for me in America. Amazing that a man that has no morals, kindness, or compassion continue to trick.” Yep. But you know, today I was reading Mary Beard, who is a brilliant historian on ancient Rome and, yeah, the ancient Roman emperors, some of the ancient Greek, some ancient ancient Romans and others, they’re all in a way, when you go into the detail, they all kind of didn’t play such dissimilar games on their own societies in order to rule them with serious iron fists. Great point, Barbara. Thank you.

Q: Diane, “Would Orwell view Israel today?”

A: That is a whole area of debate, which I don’t want to get into now because that’s, I don’t ever want to be not nuanced, but that’s a whole separate discussion, I think. Thanks, Damian.

Q: Andrea, “I’m reading ‘Animal Farm’ at school in grade six. Do you think..?” You’re reading “Animal Farm” at school in grade six and you’re on lockdown on a Saturday, Andrea? That’s extraordinary! God, lockdown is extraordinary. Thank you. “Do you think that Snowball’s overall game was to gain complete control of the farm?”

A: Yes, that’s my personal opinion, Andrea. Thank you.

Myrna… Well at least to show ambition and opportunism. Yes.

Myrna, “So Trump claims he’s a victim and he’s fighting for you.” Yep. Not only Trump, but many others.

John, “A friend told me he was thinking of writing a musical using ‘Down and Out in London and Paris.’ Well, a .” Maybe he’s right. Oh, that’s really interesting idea, John. Yeah, I have to think about that more. Certainly they tried with “Animal Farm” in 19… Never really been successful in turning it into film or musicals. I think because they were written as satires. So you’ve got to keep the dark comedy going together with the serious. And I think that it’s very hard to turn, those amongst the hardest to turn into musicals or film in a way, into other genres.

Mavis, thank you. Ruth, thank you. And happy New Year as well, and an easy fast to you and to everybody and a peaceful and healthy fast. Nima, Thank you.

Q: Greta, “Was he married?”

A: Yes. That’s another whole story to go into.

“The African nationalist government made bizarre use here of communism,” exactly, “To act against the Anglican , a Catholic priest in Joburg.” Yeah, absolutely, Josie. I mean they were, you know, they were good, maybe slightly less sophisticated versions of using the doublespeak, you know, to quote Orwell. Lorna, thank you.

To reading “Down and Out in Paris in London,” We didn’t eat in restaurants for a long time after. That’s great, Lorna.

Romane, thank you.

Q: “Did Orwell believe in God?”

A: Yeah, great question. I don’t think he really did. He writes a little bit about religion, and for him it’s really these abstract deities, that are imagination based.

Lana, “Orwell lived in a small cottage to the north of Hartfordshire. It was next to a farm. That’s where he wrote ‘Animal Farm.’” Great. Oh, thanks so much for that, Lana.

Naomi, with a woman. Yeah, we’ll get into that. It’d have to be another whole lecture. Thank you.

Robin, “Trump inherited from his father. He victimised himself by squandering.” Okay.

Nikki, “I wonder how Walter Benjamin and Orwell would’ve gotten up.” That’s a fascinating question. That’s really interesting. That’s lots of interesting possibilities there, Nikki.

Naomi, “Rachel, with woman.” Yeah, Naomi. Not mentioned 895. Thank you.

And Marcel and family, thank you. And all best wishes to you over the fast as well and to everybody.

Susan, “So very comforting to hear the Roman leaders similar,” not only Trump, but to many, many in our times. “Well, many have talked about the decline of the West.” No, I don’t only think it’s maybe America, but others. But maybe, maybe not.

Bobby . “Re: Orwell’s antisemitism, whether he repudiated it.” Yeah, he certainly didn’t think to be round up and murdered. Yeah, I mean, Bobby, absolutely. I mean, he had the negative stereotype in the earlier works, the 1933 writing, “Down and Out.” You know, you definitely get some of those phrases I quoted where he used the stereotype of Jewish people, is absolutely incited. You know, as many of those other writers, I mentioned it as well, his milieu. but there’s a big step or maybe not such a big step. But anyway, there’s a big step between that and of course, murdering. 89 care.

Marcel, “My grandson had ‘Animal Farm’ on his book list at age 14.”

Anne, great, well-known cartoon form of “Animal Farm.” Yes. And maybe because it’s in satire, that cartoons can work quite well with these, with “Animal Farm” at least, anyway.

Susan, thank you.

And Julian, “Political opponents have made him a martyr.” Yeah, it’s also true. Absolutely. They don’t realise it. Okay.

So thank you very much, everybody. And hope you have a very good Yom Kippur and healthy and well over the fast. And to say to everyone thank you and to Hannah again, thanks very much and take care.