Orwell: the Pleasure of Wadham's View.

[Peter Davison]

I was delighted to read Stephen Wadhams' contribution to Orwell Discuss. I had just started editing Orwell when Mr Wadhams 'Remembering Orwell' was published. It is an indication of how valuable I have found it that it is one of the most tattered and marked-up books on my shelves. I have never stopped referring to it and since then and until what will be my last book, 'A Life in Letters', I have had recourse to it hence grateful references to it in that last volume.

Reading how Mr Wadhams set about researching that volume in his contribution to the website makes it very clear just why his book has proved so valuable. The little cameos of Paul Potts, Sir John Grotrian, Sir Steven Runciman, Margaret Nelson (and the visit to Barnhill) and Jack Denny were especially revealing. What these reminiscences don't reveal is what must have been obvious to them all - Mr Wadhams' tact and skill. What a pity Anthony Powell reacted as he did!

One of the things that particularly impressed me was the way Mr Wadhams did not fabricate emotions he did not feel, as when he stood in Orwell's room at Barnhill. How easy it would have been to write some emotional, but false, reaction! But not Mr Wadhams. 'Orwell's spirit eluded me' he confesses.

I am pretty sure that the answer to where Orwell saw the young woman in Wigan digging at the drain, was when he walked by the end of her alleyway, as recorded in his diary. The scene from the train is an example of what is often denied to Orwell: creativity, something we experience in, for example, three famous occasions the sources of which have been questioned; shooting the elephant, witnessing a hanging, and being beaten at St Cyprian's.

What we also get in this essay is a very good account of how the raw material was processed -and honestly processed - into radio programmes. I loved his 'lie' that George Woodcock's final reading was 'great!' and Wadhams' solution: a read-through version, 'just for insurance'. And the recreation of the words of the funeral service from the Book of Common Prayer, just as Orwell desired, is very touching.

If only Mr Wadhams' book could be reprinted for a new generation of readers of Orwell! I for one would like a clean, fresh copy. In such a new edition, this contribution to 'Orwell Discuss' might very usefully be included.
So, Mr Wadhams, my warm thanks to you for all the help you have given me and so many others over three decades.