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(1960s' POP MUSIC)
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Swinging London.
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The past sent packing,
and good riddance too.
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New was what counted, Britain minted fresh.
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No more bowing and scraping to tradition,
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the sacred cows of the establishment
given a right old butchering.
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(RICHARD DIMBLEBY) It is now 9.20.
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Ludgate Hill crowded this morningwith thousands of people,
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who have been pouring in since dawn
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to see the passingof the body of Winston Churchill
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on its way here to St Paul's Cathedral,from which I'm talking at the moment.
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But then, in a dark,
cold January, Winston Churchill died,
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and all of a sudden
London stopped swinging.
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Out from some timeless wintry fog
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shambled the hairy old beast history,
big with memories.
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People in the streets
stood in the freezing cold
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as the enormous coffin staggered past
on the shoulders of guardsmen.
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Royalty paid its respects
to the great commoner
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by waiting at the altar of St Paul's.
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The dockers paid their respects
by dipping the jibs of their cranes
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as the coffin-laden barge sailed past.
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Satire held its tongue.
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Even us smart-alec
history students stopped sniggering
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and started paying attention,
caught out by an unexpected rush of feeling,
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a suspiciously patriotic lump in the throat.
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Something immense had happened,
the death of a patriarch,
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the passing of a certainty
about what it meant to be British.
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What it meant, Churchill knew, was to be
the inheritor of an astonishing history.
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But once the sniffling
stopped and the eyes dried,
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disrespectful thoughts crept back in.
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Perhaps the weight
of the British past was a crushing burden,
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a millstone round the neck of the future.
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What use were Churchill's endless fairy tales
of the sceptr'd isle for us mods?
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No, in 1965, my loyalty
was to a different Winston.
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Rebellious, suspicious
of cheerleading claptrap -
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Winston Smith, the reluctant hero of George
Orwell's nightmare parable of the future.
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This, in 1984, is London,
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chief city of Airstrip One,a province of the state of Oceania.
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Orwell, we knew, cared deeply for history,
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not the history of pomp,
but the history of people,
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written not in purple rhapsodies,
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but Orwell's English,
sharp and hard as granite.
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Orwell's history, then, was not the kind
that wallowed in self-congratulation.
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It was the kind that asked hard questions.
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But for all their differences, Orwell
and Churchill did have this in common -
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they not only wrote
the history of their times, they lived it.
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Look at Churchill,
look at Orwell and you'll understand
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what happened to Britain in the 20th century.
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You'll see how our past shaped our future.
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(MUSIC: ETON BOATING SONG)
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In 1874, when Winston Churchill was born,
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this place, the Royal Naval Dockyard
at Chatham, was in its prime,
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turning out the ships and guns
that made Britain more powerful
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than she's ever been before or since.
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He must have thought
it would go on forever.
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Ninety years later, when he died,
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it was on its way
to becoming a museum and a scrap yard.
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But then history
has a cruel way with optimism.
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There never was any chance really
that Winston Churchill could escape history.
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He was, after all, born in a palace,
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Blenheim, the great limestone pile
of his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough.
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Winston's father, Randolph,
boy wonder of the Tories,
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Chancellor of the Exchequer at just 37,
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seemed set to be the latest Churchill
to embark on a meteoric rise.
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But he was also a prima donna, forever
stamping his feet and threatening to resign.
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Finally, the Tories let him go.
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He never got back to power.
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His mother, Jenny,
was the ultimate society hostess -
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glamorous, rich,
American, desirably luscious,
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perpetually surrounded
by breathless admirers.
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But Winston hardly knew his parents.
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As usual with little aristocrats,
it was his nanny, Nanny Everest,
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who did most of the mothering.
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As usual with boys of his class,
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he was packed off to boarding school
at the earliest possible opportunity.
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There he listened, quaking with fear,
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to the screams of eight-year-olds
having their bottoms soundly birched.
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Later, as Home Secretary, he'd say that
his sympathy with the convicts of England
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came from doing
eleven years of penal servitude
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in the public and private schools of England.
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Churchill wrote he had only had a handful of
conversations with his father in his entire life.
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One of them happened one day
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while Winston was playing
with his 1,500 toy soldiers.
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Now, Randolph never thought
his podgy, unprepossessing boy
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had the stuff of politics or the law.
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But when he saw Winston lining
up his infantry and cavalry just so,
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he wondered whether
he might not like to be a soldier.
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And that did it, really.
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Winston's whole life would be battles,
with a gun, pen and voice.
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He'd pick up his father's broken sword and
make the name of Churchill glorious again.
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So Winston charged headlong into the fray.
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India, Africa, you name it, he was there,
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even if he had to barge
his way uninvited into history,
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trading on family contacts,
paying his way to get to the action.
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And as well as charging,
Winston began to gorge... on history.
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It was in the noonday shadows of Bangalore
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that history became
Churchill's personal religion,
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the muse that fired everything he did,
his politics, his speech making, his battle cry.
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Reading it, writing it, making it,
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were all inseparable
in the personality that was unfolding -
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ardent, impetuous, impassioned.
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And it was in the empire
that Winston began to write.
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Books, letters, dispatches
to newspapers. And what stories.
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It helped, of course, that he was socially
shameless and physically fearless.
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There he was, a fleshy five foot seven,
spinning a ripping yarn.
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He knew how to make the headlines
and he knew how to milk them.
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But Winston
was never just gung-ho for Winston.
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All his life he believed in the greatness
and goodness of the British Empire.
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But he knew next to nothing about
what made that empire really tick - money.
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(MUSIC: THE ROAD TO MANDALAY)
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For while Churchill was humming
the chorus of "The Road to Mandalay",
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Richard Blair,
George Orwell's father, was actually on it,
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cashing in on tea, teak,
and not least, narcotics.
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Blair worked for
the Opium Department of the Raj.
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His job was to supervise the production
of poppies and their export to Shanghai,
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ensuring on behalf
of the empire that the Chinese habit
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would never knowingly go under-stocked.
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In 1903, Richard's wife, Ida,
gave birth to a son, Eric.
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Only later would he be known
as George Orwell.
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A year later, Ida moved Eric
and his older sister back to England,
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while Richard stayed behind in Burma.
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Home was 17 Vicarage Road,
Henley-on-Thames.
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Nostalgic, middle-class, suburban.
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(CHORAL MUSIC)
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Winston Churchill may have been
in the top drawer of the ruling class
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and Eric Blair at the bottom,
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00:11:12,400 --> 00:11:15,631
but they were connected
by the obligatory rite of passage
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for all small boys destined to govern
the empire - exile to boarding school.
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Soon after I arrivedat St Cyprian's, I began wetting my bed.
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Nowadays, I believe bed-wetting insuch circumstances is taken for granted.
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It is a normal reaction in children
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who've been removedfrom their homes to a strange place.
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In those days, however,it was looked on as a disgusting crime
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which the child committed on purposeand for which the proper cure was a beating.
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Night after night, I prayed with a fervournever previously attained in my prayers,
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"Please, God, do not let me wet my bed.Please, God, do not let me wet my bed. "
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St Cyprian's may not have been
quite the sadistic Home Counties gulag
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that George Orwell
described nearly 40 years on,
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but there's no doubt
that it was his apprenticeship
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in contempt for the rituals of empire.
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History lessons he wrote off
as meaningless conditioning.
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Orgies of dates, with the keener boysleaping up and down in their places
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in their eagernessto shout out the right answers.
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And at the same time, not feelingthe faintest interest in the meaning
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of the mysterious eventsthey were naming.
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The torments, the canings, the pewter bowls
with yesterday's porridge caked to the rim,
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the morning plunge
into a slimy swimming bath,
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left Eric with a lifelong horror of dirt and
a burning hatred of the fake service ethos
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for which small boys were supposed
to suffer all these baptisms.
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If you were rich,
all these ordeals were a trial by fire,
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a kind of admission card to the ruling class.
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But Eric was not rich,
not part of the upper class.
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He got the canings
without the promise of the perks.
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His weapon against them
was an air of bloody-minded indifference,
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and when he came here to Eton,
he refined that insouciance into an art form.
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If Blair was made bugler for the cadets,
he'd show up with his badge askew.
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If Blair would recite poetry,
it would be Stevenson's "Suicide Club".
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Better still, he'd just stand there,
sardonic and silent.
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(MUSIC: THE BRITISH GRENADIER)
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Winston Churchill
could never see the point of silence.
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He was drunk on words, and he wanted
everyone else to share the intoxication.
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Back home from the empire in 1900,
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he defied his father's pessimism
by following him into politics.
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00:14:09,840 --> 00:14:15,392
And once he had discovered he'd got
the gift of the gab, he let the eloquence rip,
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drafting and rehearsing his speeches like
some great trouper of the Edwardian stage.
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Unlike many politicians,
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Churchill didn't learn the art of public
speaking from posh debating societies.
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00:14:29,640 --> 00:14:35,192
He cut his teeth as an orator up here
in the industrial north, on soap boxes,
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from the tops of buses, and in music halls,
where he really had to earn the cheers.
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00:14:42,760 --> 00:14:48,153
Winston's irrepressible activism
made it impossible for him to stay a Tory.
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00:14:48,320 --> 00:14:51,596
When he defected to the Liberals in 1904,
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he joined a party joyously hammering
the nails into the coffin of Victorian England.
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00:14:58,280 --> 00:15:01,352
We don't usually
think of Churchill as a radical,
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00:15:01,520 --> 00:15:05,638
but all sorts of social reforms
poured from his fertile mind.
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00:15:05,800 --> 00:15:10,271
Labour Exchanges, unemployment
insurance, cleaning up sweatshops.
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00:15:12,240 --> 00:15:18,349
But Churchill's radicalism too often played
second fiddle to his grandstanding egotism.
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00:15:18,520 --> 00:15:23,275
As Home Secretary, he was a bit too eager
to treat politics like battles,
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a bit too trigger-happy,
deploying troops against strikers,
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treating suffragettes like prisoners of war.
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00:15:33,280 --> 00:15:37,319
It made sense, then, to use this boiling,
piston-driven belligerence
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where it could do some good.
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00:15:39,720 --> 00:15:44,111
At 36, Churchill was made
First Lord of the Admiralty.
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00:15:45,840 --> 00:15:49,196
Three years later, the world was at war.
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Gallipoli 1915,
52,000 Allied troops perish in Turkey.
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A bloody fiasco, and an expedition
championed by Winston Churchill.
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00:16:03,800 --> 00:16:07,918
Overnight, Churchill went from being
the shooting star of the war government
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to its burnt-out meteor.
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00:16:10,520 --> 00:16:15,036
Accused, not altogether fairly,
of recklessness and incompetence,
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00:16:15,200 --> 00:16:19,910
the Tories paid him back for his treachery
by booting him out of office.
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00:16:21,040 --> 00:16:26,797
Stung by the humiliation and tortured by
guilt for his part in the massacre at Gallipoli,
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00:16:26,960 --> 00:16:31,078
Churchill crashed into
one of his "black dog" depressions.
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# In God they bid, young ploughboy,
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00:16:36,600 --> 00:16:39,990
# Ploughing on the plain... #
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00:16:40,160 --> 00:16:44,551
Churchill did his penance
in the trenches of Flanders,
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using his old army connections,
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00:16:47,120 --> 00:16:51,079
so that a politician
could demote himself to a Tommy.
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00:16:52,960 --> 00:16:57,715
On the 23rd November, 1915,
he wrote to his wife Clemmie.
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00:17:00,680 --> 00:17:04,719
My darling, we've finishedour first 48 hours in the trenches.
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00:17:04,880 --> 00:17:09,032
I spent the morning in a hot bath,engineered with some difficulty.
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00:17:09,200 --> 00:17:11,668
Filth and rubbish everywhere.
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00:17:11,840 --> 00:17:15,992
Graves built into the defencesand scattered about promiscuously.
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00:17:16,160 --> 00:17:19,232
Feet and clothingbreaking through the soil.
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00:17:19,400 --> 00:17:22,995
In the dazzling moonlight,troops of enormous rats
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00:17:23,160 --> 00:17:27,233
creep and glide to the unceasingaccompaniment of rifle and machine guns.
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Life on the front line
was expiation for Churchill.
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00:17:38,760 --> 00:17:40,796
He'd served his time.
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00:17:40,960 --> 00:17:45,670
Now he could look soldiers and
the House of Commons in the eye again.
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00:17:47,880 --> 00:17:50,678
Eric Blair was too young for the trenches,
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00:17:50,840 --> 00:17:55,152
but while at Eton he did his bit
by writing bad recruitment poems.
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00:17:55,320 --> 00:17:59,836
When the war was over, he may
have felt guilty, like a lot of his generation -
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guilt for missing the slaughter.
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00:18:04,200 --> 00:18:07,078
The next step after Eton
should have been Oxford.
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00:18:07,240 --> 00:18:12,997
But like Churchill, his fate was decided
by a premature verdict of stupidity.
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00:18:13,160 --> 00:18:17,153
His father believed that
he was too dim to win a scholarship.
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00:18:17,320 --> 00:18:21,632
Even if Eric had had the chance,
it's likely he would have rejected
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00:18:21,800 --> 00:18:24,633
the smoothly-moneyed
escalator through privilege.
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00:18:24,800 --> 00:18:28,236
Instead, it was off to the colonies.
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00:18:28,400 --> 00:18:31,949
(MUSIC: ETON BOATING SONG)
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00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:36,953
There's no sign that Eric
thought he'd been hard done by, though.
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00:18:37,120 --> 00:18:41,511
He might have shared some of Churchill's
idealism about the do-good empire.
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00:18:42,760 --> 00:18:45,115
Five years in the Burmese police,
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00:18:45,280 --> 00:18:49,558
perhaps the most thankless branch
of the entire colonial service,
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00:18:49,720 --> 00:18:52,234
smartly cured him of that.
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00:18:52,400 --> 00:18:57,474
Doing his job as efficiently as he could,
rounding up petty criminals,
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00:18:57,640 --> 00:19:03,033
looking the other way when they were
beaten, he wore his power like a hair shirt.
226
00:19:03,200 --> 00:19:07,990
The Burmese he caught and jailed, he knew,
didn't think of themselves as criminals,
227
00:19:08,160 --> 00:19:11,152
but as victims of foreign conquerors.
228
00:19:12,040 --> 00:19:17,558
All over the empire, there were men
who hated their part in it as heartily as he did,
229
00:19:17,720 --> 00:19:23,636
but were trapped in a conspiracy of silence
or the cowardice of acquiescence.
230
00:19:25,560 --> 00:19:30,793
One incident more than any other brought
his imperial imprisonment home to him.
231
00:19:31,800 --> 00:19:37,238
An elephant had broken its chains
and gone on the rampage at a local bazaar.
232
00:19:37,400 --> 00:19:40,278
Blair picked up his rifle.
233
00:19:40,440 --> 00:19:43,750
- Shall I call the hunters?
- No, rouse no one.
234
00:19:43,920 --> 00:19:46,514
I'll try and get him myself.
235
00:19:48,960 --> 00:19:50,951
When he found the beast,
236
00:19:51,120 --> 00:19:54,510
peacefully throwing grass
and bamboo shoots into its mouth,
237
00:19:54,680 --> 00:20:00,198
it was obvious there was no reason to kill it,
except the huge crowd expected him to.
238
00:20:03,240 --> 00:20:07,472
I could feel their two thousand willspressing me forward irresistibly.
239
00:20:07,640 --> 00:20:11,997
It was at this moment,with the rifle in my hands,
240
00:20:12,160 --> 00:20:17,518
that I first grasped the hollowness and futilityof the white man's dominion in the east.
241
00:20:17,680 --> 00:20:20,558
Here was I, the white man with his gun,
242
00:20:20,720 --> 00:20:23,632
standing in frontof an unarmed native crowd,
243
00:20:23,800 --> 00:20:26,394
seemingly the lead actor of the piece.
244
00:20:26,560 --> 00:20:30,075
But in reality I was only an absurd puppet.
245
00:20:30,240 --> 00:20:32,310
(MUSIC: ETON BOAT SONG)
246
00:20:43,640 --> 00:20:48,555
When I pulled the trigger,I did not hear the bang or feel the kick,
247
00:20:48,720 --> 00:20:53,191
but I heard the devilish roar of gleethat went up from the crowd.
248
00:20:53,360 --> 00:20:57,911
In that instant, in too shorta time for the bullet to get there,
249
00:20:58,080 --> 00:21:02,153
a mysterious, terrible changehad come over the elephant.
250
00:21:02,320 --> 00:21:07,633
He neither stirred nor fell,but every line of his body had altered.
251
00:21:08,640 --> 00:21:12,519
In the end, I could stand itno longer and went away.
252
00:21:12,680 --> 00:21:16,514
I heard later that it took himhalf an hour to die.
253
00:21:16,680 --> 00:21:20,559
I often wondered,had any of the others grasped
254
00:21:20,720 --> 00:21:24,633
that I had done itsolely to avoid looking a fool?
255
00:21:35,440 --> 00:21:38,512
In 1927, Blair went home,
256
00:21:38,680 --> 00:21:41,831
where a sniff of the English air convinced him
257
00:21:42,000 --> 00:21:46,118
that he couldn't be part
of an oppressive system a day longer.
258
00:21:47,240 --> 00:21:49,629
Home was here at Southwold,
259
00:21:49,800 --> 00:21:54,476
a Suffolk seaside town
so full of Anglo-Indian retirees
260
00:21:54,640 --> 00:21:58,110
that it was known as a little Raj by the sea.
261
00:21:58,280 --> 00:22:00,840
Eric's sister Avril kept a teashop,
262
00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:04,913
Mother played bridge,
Father stared at the sea.
263
00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:09,437
When Eric announced to the family
that he was leaving the Burma police
264
00:22:09,600 --> 00:22:15,675
to become, of all things, a writer,
you can well imagine their horrified disbelief.
265
00:22:18,080 --> 00:22:21,038
(CHORAL MUSIC)
266
00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:26,593
And what was the England
that Eric had come home to?
267
00:22:26,760 --> 00:22:30,435
A country he'd later describe
as resembling a family -
268
00:22:30,600 --> 00:22:36,277
a rather stuffy Victorian family
where rich relations are kowtowed to
269
00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:38,874
and poor relations are horribly sat upon;
270
00:22:39,040 --> 00:22:41,110
where the young are thwarted
271
00:22:41,320 --> 00:22:46,474
and most of the power is in the hands
of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts.
272
00:22:47,840 --> 00:22:52,630
A family, he said,
with the wrong members in control.
273
00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:56,554
May 1926, the General Strike.
274
00:22:56,720 --> 00:22:59,598
Newspapers cease printingon the stroke of midnight.
275
00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:02,832
One of those in control
was Winston Churchill.
276
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:05,389
After 20 years away from the Tories,
277
00:23:05,560 --> 00:23:09,394
he was now back in the fold
as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
278
00:23:09,560 --> 00:23:12,154
busy crushing the General Strike.
279
00:23:14,200 --> 00:23:18,398
Southwold was not exactly
a hotbed of socialism,
280
00:23:18,560 --> 00:23:23,759
which only made Eric all the more
determined to expiate the sins of empire.
281
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:28,152
In a world where pretty much
everyone knew and kept their place,
282
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:30,914
he couldn't wait to lose his.
283
00:23:31,080 --> 00:23:36,950
Most people who are restless with their lot
in life wanted to rise above their station.
284
00:23:37,120 --> 00:23:41,398
Eric was impatient to sink
all the way to the bottom.
285
00:23:45,240 --> 00:23:50,872
There was something almost Franciscan
about his nosedive into squalor.
286
00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:55,033
It wasn't just a renunciation
of middle-class respectability,
287
00:23:55,200 --> 00:24:00,832
it was the calculated bodily embrace of
everything that repelled the fastidious Eric -
288
00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:04,709
muck, indescribably evil smells.
289
00:24:06,080 --> 00:24:09,436
When he sold his clothes
and bought a tramp's kit,
290
00:24:09,600 --> 00:24:12,478
he was making a point, at least to himself,
291
00:24:12,640 --> 00:24:17,316
that his life as a writer
would start by plumbing the depths.
292
00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:21,993
It was like St Catherine of Siena
drinking a bowl of pus
293
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:26,073
to show that nothing human
was beneath her.
294
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:31,312
For two years,
Blair did the Cook's tour of destitution,
295
00:24:31,480 --> 00:24:35,871
comprehensive, unrelenting,
gruesomely anti-scenic.
296
00:24:36,040 --> 00:24:40,477
In the bathroom of one
especially horrible doss house,
297
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:44,838
or "spike", he finally got down to basic truths.
298
00:24:46,320 --> 00:24:48,390
It was a disgusting sight.
299
00:24:48,560 --> 00:24:52,678
All the indecent secretsof our underwear were exposed.
300
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:58,312
The grime, the rents and patches,the bits of string doing duty for buttons,
301
00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:01,278
the layers upon layersof fragmentary garments,
302
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:05,228
some of them mere collectionsof holes held together by dirt.
303
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:09,351
The room becamea press of steaming nudity,
304
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:11,511
the sweaty odours of the tramps
305
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:16,435
competing with the sicklysub-faecal stench native to the spike.
306
00:25:19,240 --> 00:25:23,358
He didn't have to do it,
he wasn't that hard up.
307
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:26,478
But there was never anything
second hand about Blair,
308
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:30,713
any more than there was about Churchill.
Both were doers, not lookers.
309
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:36,432
In the trenches or the doss houses,
they needed to live what they talked about.
310
00:25:38,680 --> 00:25:45,597
In 1933, Eric Blair published his first book,
"Down and Out In Paris and London",
311
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:50,959
but the name on the cover was not Blair,
but George Orwell, a pseudonym.
312
00:25:51,120 --> 00:25:55,193
No name was more royal
than the name of the king, George,
313
00:25:55,360 --> 00:26:00,434
and Orwell, a river in Suffolk,
connected him to the English landscape.
314
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,592
But the landscape through which
George Orwell would travel
315
00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:08,470
was not that of hedgerows
and haystacks, but gutters and gasworks.
316
00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:13,479
(MUSIC: JERUSALEM)
317
00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:18,671
In the years of the slump,
318
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:22,355
Orwell and Churchill
were on opposite sides of the barricades.
319
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:24,829
Orwell had declared war on the empire,
320
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:28,037
Churchill was obsessed
with defending it to the last.
321
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:33,909
Our myth was that the British Empire
was founded on the playing fields of Eton.
322
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:37,470
But Orwell had been there
and he knew better.
323
00:26:37,640 --> 00:26:42,350
He knew that the British Empire
was founded on fields of coal.
324
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:47,116
The Germans and the Americans could
fool around with chemicals and electricals,
325
00:26:47,280 --> 00:26:50,590
but our bedrock was coke and nutty slag.
326
00:26:52,000 --> 00:26:55,356
But then, in the Thirties,
that bedrock caved in.
327
00:26:55,520 --> 00:27:01,834
Export demand collapsed, mines were shut,
whole towns coughed and died.
328
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:07,478
This is what British history,
the grandiose epic of the empire,
329
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:11,155
had finally come to,
from the Jarrow of the Venerable Bede
330
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:14,471
to the Jarrow of the hunger marchers.
331
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:19,479
Never had the country
been so bitterly divided.
332
00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:26,833
In the south, they built
model villages with miniature collieries,
333
00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:31,073
miniature farms and miniature plough teams
coming over the hill.
334
00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:36,439
In Wales, Scotland and the north of England,
that hill would have been a slagheap,
335
00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:38,830
and it wouldn't have been a ploughboy,
336
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:44,393
but desperate scramblers searching
for coal waste with their bare hands.
337
00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:50,838
Orwell, who cherished the countryside
with an unsentimental, almost feral, passion,
338
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:55,516
now headed for this underworld,
the dark shadow on the lungs of Britain.
339
00:27:55,680 --> 00:28:00,515
When his publisher asked him
to write a book on life in the industrial north,
340
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:05,435
Orwell grabbed the chance
and set out on the road to Wigan pier.
341
00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:14,395
What he found
was a town broken by Depression,
342
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:17,677
coated in grime
which befouled everything.
343
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:21,071
Black thumbprints on the bread
his landlord cut him,
344
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:24,994
a second skin of soot
when he went down the pit.
345
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:30,314
And if being unemployed in Wigan was hell,
being employed was purgatory.
346
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:33,119
Get up at 3.45 in the morning,
347
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:38,479
crawl half-naked through four-foot-high
passages, sometimes for miles -
348
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:43,509
as far, Orwell said,
as from London Bridge to Oxford Circus.
349
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:49,357
When he wasn't down the pits,
Orwell was here in Wigan Public Library.
350
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:55,277
Here's his name in the visitors' book -
E. A. Blair, 72 Warrington Lane, Wigan.
351
00:28:55,440 --> 00:28:59,752
He was doing research
on the miners' battle to make ends meet.
352
00:28:59,920 --> 00:29:02,639
Wages, rents and prices.
353
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:10,032
"The Road to Wigan Pier" came in
for criticism in its day from right and left.
354
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:13,988
Conservatives, of course,
thought it was a piece of Bolshevik trash,
355
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:18,597
but socialist intellectuals attacked it
for being too grimly pessimistic,
356
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:22,275
a picture of the working class
as broken by misery
357
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:26,115
rather than indestructible proletarian heroes.
358
00:29:26,880 --> 00:29:29,758
None of this prevented
"The Road to Wigan Pier"
359
00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:32,514
from being a massive best seller.
360
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:38,471
Why? Well, Orwell took the usual
political position paper and junked it.
361
00:29:38,640 --> 00:29:42,189
Instead, he made a real work of literature.
362
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:45,113
When you follow him
into these soot-choked mines
363
00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:48,431
or the freezing dampness
of the terraced houses,
364
00:29:48,600 --> 00:29:52,479
you know you're in the company
of the Dickens of the Depression,
365
00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:56,519
someone who could
make you hear, see and feel
366
00:29:56,680 --> 00:30:00,559
the physical reality
of a hard world in a hard time.
367
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:04,076
You don't really want to look,
but then you can't turn away.
368
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:12,193
One night in Barnsley,
Orwell went to hear Oswald Mosley
369
00:30:12,360 --> 00:30:16,433
laud Fascist Italy
and Hitler's Germany to the skies.
370
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:22,317
To Orwell's horror, the working class
audience who'd started out booing Mosley
371
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:25,153
ended up cheering him.
372
00:30:26,560 --> 00:30:30,348
A fight was coming, and the Tory
Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin,
373
00:30:30,520 --> 00:30:34,433
and his Chancellor, Neville Chamberlain,
were too gutless to join in.
374
00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:36,591
What was their message?
375
00:30:36,760 --> 00:30:40,673
Peace in our time,
or please do your business somewhere else
376
00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:43,513
while we get on with hoeing the garden.
377
00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:48,919
This is the BBC Home Service.Hello, children everywhere.
378
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:51,355
That's one of the most familiar voices...
379
00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:54,876
Their vision of Britain
was a little world unto itself.
380
00:30:55,040 --> 00:30:58,510
Europe was over there,
full of unsavoury continentals
381
00:30:58,680 --> 00:31:01,877
doing beastly things to each other.
382
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:06,477
All very regrettable, no doubt,
but surely their business, not ours.
383
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:11,873
But the world out there was turning very ugly.
384
00:31:12,040 --> 00:31:15,271
Fascism was spreading across Europe.
385
00:31:15,440 --> 00:31:20,195
A huge cloud was falling over the village green.
It was time to make a choice.
386
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:26,555
Orwell made his.
In December 1936, he set off for Spain.
387
00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:34,278
Eccentrically kitted out in a long woolly scarf
and modified Balaclava,
388
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:39,912
the lanky, floppy-haired Englishman
set about drilling the anti-fascist recruits.
389
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:43,959
All that police training
in Burma had a use after all.
390
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:49,877
But after four months at the front, Orwell,
unmissably conspicuous at six foot two,
391
00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:52,156
took a bullet through the neck.
392
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:57,753
He survived physically,
even if his idealism did not.
393
00:31:57,920 --> 00:32:02,118
He'd seen at first hand how his
comrades had been brutally crushed,
394
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:05,317
not just by Franco,
but also by the communists.
395
00:32:05,480 --> 00:32:11,510
The ordeal in Spain had taught him to hate
communism, especially Stalin's brand.
396
00:32:13,440 --> 00:32:17,956
It was because Orwell hoped
for a home-grown British social revolution
397
00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:21,556
and because he was
sick of hearing excuses for Stalin,
398
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:25,713
all those coffee house commissars
prepared to forgive him for everything
399
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:27,678
just because he wasn't Hitler,
400
00:32:27,840 --> 00:32:32,152
that he decided to write
the real history of the Bolshevik revolution.
401
00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:39,795
In deadly earnest, he decided to revisit
that old literary form, the barnyard fable.
402
00:32:44,640 --> 00:32:49,316
On my return from Spain,I thought of exposing the Soviet myth
403
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:53,758
in a story that could be easilyunderstood by almost anyone.
404
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:59,074
However, the actual details of the storydid not come to me for some time,
405
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:04,519
until I saw a little boy drivinga huge carthorse along a narrow path,
406
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:07,194
whipping it whenever it tried to turn.
407
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:12,115
It struck me that if only such animalsbecame aware of their strength,
408
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:15,158
we should have no power over them.
409
00:33:19,280 --> 00:33:22,317
(THREATENING MUSIC)
410
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:33,839
"Animal Farm" would not be written
for another six years,
411
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:38,869
but already Orwell was beginning
to reinvent the art of political writing.
412
00:33:40,040 --> 00:33:44,272
Tending to his goats and chickens
at his freezing cottage in Hertfordshire,
413
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:49,560
fighting off the early signs of tuberculosis,
he set about purging the language
414
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:52,518
of the pompous preaching of the official left
415
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:56,355
and the nauseous sentimentality
of the romantic right.
416
00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:01,877
As Orwell pottered about his mini-farm,
417
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:07,273
Churchill restlessly stalked the grounds
of his ruinously expensive mansion in Kent,
418
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:11,956
brooding like Orwell
on the ugliness of dictatorship.
419
00:34:12,560 --> 00:34:18,032
For years now, Churchill had been thought of
by his own party as a posturing has-been,
420
00:34:18,200 --> 00:34:24,799
embarrassingly devoted to lost causes like
keeping India out of the hands of the Indians.
421
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:29,748
So instead of politics,
Churchill turned back to writing.
422
00:34:29,920 --> 00:34:34,471
And as he wrote - thousands of pages
on his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough,
423
00:34:34,640 --> 00:34:38,519
thousands more on "The History
of the English Speaking Peoples",
424
00:34:38,680 --> 00:34:43,117
keeping company with the vanished
generations who faced invasion before -
425
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:48,798
so Churchill's convictions
about what had to be done now hardened.
426
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:55,996
First, the Little Englanders, stuck in their
dream world of hunts and gymkhanas,
427
00:34:56,160 --> 00:35:01,917
had to wake up to the fact that, like it or not,
Britain would share Europe's fate.
428
00:35:02,720 --> 00:35:05,871
(CHURCHILL 'S VOICE) There are those who say,
429
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:11,797
"Let us ignore the continent of Europe,leave it with its hatreds and armaments
430
00:35:11,960 --> 00:35:17,239
"to stew in its own juice,to fight out its own quarrels. "
431
00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:21,118
There would be muchto be said for this plan
432
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:25,671
if only we could unfasten the British islandsfrom their rock foundations
433
00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:30,994
and could tow them 3,000 milesacross the Atlantic Ocean.
434
00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:36,236
Well, I have not yet heard of any wayin which this could be done.
435
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:41,076
Churchill reserved
his greatest contempt for the appeasers,
436
00:35:41,240 --> 00:35:46,314
men like Neville Chamberlain, who
seriously imagined that Hitler and the Nazis
437
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:49,392
were reasonable men
with reasonable grievances
438
00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:53,519
about the way Germany
had been treated after the last war,
439
00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:56,911
and who would stop at reasonable demands.
440
00:35:57,080 --> 00:36:00,117
The appeasers, Churchill thought,
were like men who imagined
441
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:04,956
you could satisfy a ravenous wolf
by throwing it a sheep or two,
442
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:09,432
in the hope that when it got to you,
it would be full.
443
00:36:11,480 --> 00:36:15,393
In 1938, Hitler,
who had already annexed Austria,
444
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:19,599
threatened war if he didn't
get a slice of Czechoslovakia.
445
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:25,278
Neville Chamberlain, the new Prime Minister,
ran to Munich and served it up.
446
00:36:26,800 --> 00:36:31,999
I had another talkwith the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler,
447
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:39,553
and here is the paper which bearshis name upon it as well as mine.
448
00:36:39,720 --> 00:36:42,712
(CROWD CHEERS)
449
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:49,994
For Churchill,
this was not just an act of cowardice,
450
00:36:50,160 --> 00:36:54,676
but the deepest stain on our long history,
the most shameful vindication
451
00:36:54,840 --> 00:37:00,278
of Hitler's assumption that democracies
were, by definition, spineless.
452
00:37:01,400 --> 00:37:04,119
(CHURCHILL) All is over.
453
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:07,192
Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken,
454
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:10,352
Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness.
455
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:13,990
We have passedan awful milestone in our history,
456
00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:18,039
when the whole equilibriumof Europe has been deranged
457
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:22,671
and that the terrible wordshave for the time being been pronounced
458
00:37:22,840 --> 00:37:25,229
against the western democracies,
459
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:28,949
"Thou art weighed in the balanceand found wanting".
460
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:38,116
When, in spite of the promises
he'd made at Munich,
461
00:37:38,280 --> 00:37:41,317
Hitler went ahead and occupied Prague,
462
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:48,113
Chamberlain took it personally, realising that
he and the country had been royally had.
463
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:56,273
On the 1st September, 1939,
Hitler invaded Poland.
464
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:59,512
Britain and France
sent Germany an ultimatum.
465
00:38:01,080 --> 00:38:04,755
(CHAMBERLAIN) This morning,the British Ambassador in Berlin
466
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:08,754
handed the German governmenta final note,
467
00:38:08,920 --> 00:38:14,199
stating that unlesswe heard from them by eleven o'clock
468
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:18,911
that they were prepared at onceto withdraw their troops from Poland,
469
00:38:19,080 --> 00:38:23,073
a state of war would exist between us.
470
00:38:23,240 --> 00:38:28,917
I have to tell you now thatno such undertaking has been received,
471
00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:35,918
and that consequently,this country is at war with Germany.
472
00:38:39,520 --> 00:38:41,875
Neville Chamberlain's mournful voice
473
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:46,352
announced the war as if lamenting
the death of a maiden aunt.
474
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:50,472
The evacuation of children began.
475
00:38:56,280 --> 00:39:01,354
None of this meant that Chamberlain
was going to hand the reins over to Churchill.
476
00:39:01,520 --> 00:39:04,990
For all that his dark prophecies
seemed to be coming true,
477
00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:09,472
Churchill was still mistrusted
by the vast majority of his party.
478
00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:13,758
But the swing in public opinion
towards him had been so great,
479
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:16,912
it seemed prudent
to include him in the government.
480
00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:23,553
As war was declared, Churchill was given his
old job back as First Lord of the Admiralty.
481
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:29,639
But, as if in a rerun of Gallipoli, Churchill's
first big campaign ended in disaster
482
00:39:29,800 --> 00:39:33,998
when his attempt to cut off Germany's
iron ore supplies through Norway
483
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:36,594
backfired horribly.
484
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:45,197
Somehow Churchill escaped
the blame for the fiasco in Norway.
485
00:39:45,360 --> 00:39:48,830
Whatever the problems,
his energy and resolution made it seem
486
00:39:49,000 --> 00:39:51,878
as though he at least was doing his best.
487
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:58,149
Next to Neville Chamberlain - gaunt, weary,
presiding over a front bench of old geezers -
488
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:00,629
Churchill, though an old geezer himself,
489
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:05,954
seemed like a red hot volcano,
a lava flow of plans and strategies.
490
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:12,598
Confidence in Chamberlain,
meanwhile, was at an all-time low,
491
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:17,231
and on 10th May, 1940,
he was finally forced to resign.
492
00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:23,988
The weeks that followed were
the most important in Britain's long history.
493
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:27,391
Two vital questions were at stake -
494
00:40:27,560 --> 00:40:30,233
who would follow
Chamberlain as Prime Minister,
495
00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:33,915
and how would he deal
with the Nazi war machine?
496
00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:37,311
Not only the survival
of our national independence,
497
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:41,359
but that of western democracy,
would turn on the outcome.
498
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:46,753
Two kinds of men, two kinds of England,
499
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:49,798
were in play for the leadership of the country.
500
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:53,839
In the man everyone
expected to take over, Lord Halifax,
501
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:59,154
was the England of the counties -
solid, sensible, a good egg and a cool head.
502
00:40:59,320 --> 00:41:03,791
And then there was Winston,
who was none of these things.
503
00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:08,078
But in the best judgement of his life,
Halifax turned the job down.
504
00:41:08,240 --> 00:41:12,836
In the pit of his stomach,
he knew he couldn't be a war leader.
505
00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:18,791
Winston had seen the face of battle,
Halifax had only hunted foxes.
506
00:41:21,080 --> 00:41:24,470
On Friday May 10th,
Churchill went to the Palace
507
00:41:24,640 --> 00:41:26,915
and emerged as the new Prime Minister.
508
00:41:27,080 --> 00:41:32,234
On the same day came the news that
Belgium and Holland had been invaded.
509
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:38,789
Now, of course, we all know that
a "finest hour' was waiting in the wings.
510
00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:43,670
But nobody knew it then,
not in the merciless days of May 1940,
511
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:49,790
when Britain came closer than at any other
time in its history to being overwhelmed.
512
00:41:49,960 --> 00:41:55,159
Belgium and Holland were going under,
and France was soon about to join their fate.
513
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:59,552
A quarter of a million British troops
were trapped in northern France
514
00:41:59,720 --> 00:42:03,110
with hardly any hope of a safe exit.
515
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:08,593
Neither the United States nor the Soviet
Union were about to ride to our rescue,
516
00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:11,228
and hardly anyone who counted
517
00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:16,235
thought we could possibly
get out of the military nightmare alone.
518
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:21,919
Facing catastrophe,
Churchill went to the House of Commons
519
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:27,871
and made a short speech,
shocking in its clarity, defiant in its optimism.
520
00:42:29,640 --> 00:42:34,589
I would say to the House, as I said to thosewho've joined the government,
521
00:42:34,760 --> 00:42:41,313
I have nothing to offerbut blood, toil, tears and sweat.
522
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:45,792
We have before usan ordeal of the most grievous kind.
523
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:50,750
We have before us many, manylong months of struggle and of suffering.
524
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:54,159
You ask what is our policy.
525
00:42:54,320 --> 00:43:00,156
I will say it is to wage war by sea,land and air, with all our might,
526
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:03,471
with all the strength that God can give us.
527
00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:06,757
To wage war againsta monstrous tyranny
528
00:43:06,920 --> 00:43:12,392
never surpassed in the darkand lamentable catalogue of human crime.
529
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:15,120
That is our policy.
530
00:43:15,280 --> 00:43:17,840
You ask what is our aim.
531
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:21,117
I can answer in one word - victory.
532
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:23,350
Victory at all costs.
533
00:43:23,520 --> 00:43:26,318
Victory in spite of all terror.
534
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:30,109
Victory however longand hard the road may be.
535
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:33,477
For without victory there is no survival.
536
00:43:39,080 --> 00:43:42,550
We'd like to think of this
as a moment of transformation.
537
00:43:42,720 --> 00:43:47,635
Enter the great prince girding on his rusty
armour, pulling the shaky country together.
538
00:43:47,800 --> 00:43:50,678
But the truth was very different.
539
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:55,670
The military men assumed Churchill
would have to eat his words before long.
540
00:43:55,840 --> 00:43:58,957
The civil servants,
who'd always hated his operatics,
541
00:43:59,120 --> 00:44:03,113
rolled their eyes
at yet another theatrical performance.
542
00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:05,953
And the politicians, men like Halifax,
543
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:12,912
believed that Churchill would have
to trade in sentimental mush for hard reality.
544
00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:18,311
It was time, thought Halifax,
to do a deal with Germany.
545
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:22,509
Churchill was having none of it.
546
00:44:22,680 --> 00:44:26,150
In the last two weeks of May,
hidden from public view,
547
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:30,472
he fought the most desperate
and important campaign of his entire life
548
00:44:30,640 --> 00:44:35,156
to prevent Britain
from going cap in hand to Hitler.
549
00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:42,794
The battle for Britain, then,
started not in the skies against the Luftwaffe,
550
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:46,953
but here behind the closed doors
of the Cabinet War Room.
551
00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:49,918
In combat were Halifax and Churchill,
552
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:54,437
two men with very different ideas
of how to save the country.
553
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:01,994
In his memoirs, Halifax wrote
554
00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:06,790
that it was when he was taking
an idyllic walk across his estate in Yorkshire
555
00:45:06,960 --> 00:45:10,589
that the true horror of a German invasion
finally struck home.
556
00:45:10,760 --> 00:45:15,311
The very thought, he said, of a jackboot
forcing its way into this countryside,
557
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:20,759
this true fragment of undying England,
was an insult and an outrage.
558
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:23,912
Churchill would not have disagreed.
559
00:45:25,200 --> 00:45:28,192
But Churchill wasn't fighting
for the Vale of York
560
00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:31,830
or for some unreal dream of village England.
561
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:36,357
He wasn't fighting for Britain at all
understood just as a piece of geography,
562
00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:40,069
but for what he thought
was the meaning of being British,
563
00:45:40,240 --> 00:45:42,231
and that meaning was an idea,
564
00:45:42,400 --> 00:45:47,679
a precious idea we'd given to the world -
freedom and the rule of law.
565
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:52,311
Without it, having to endure
an existence by permission of the F�hrer,
566
00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:56,598
all we had was a mock Britain,
not worthy of the name really,
567
00:45:56,760 --> 00:45:59,035
let alone of our long history.
568
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:05,753
Better by far to die fighting than to live
with the shame of being a slave state.
569
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:12,629
When Churchill said all of this
to the full Cabinet on the 28th May,
570
00:46:12,800 --> 00:46:17,715
he was greeted not with polite nods,
but a thunder of fists on the table.
571
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:20,235
There would be no British Vichy,
572
00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:24,473
and at that moment,
he knew the people of Britain agreed.
573
00:46:26,960 --> 00:46:30,032
In his memoirs,
Churchill never really owned up
574
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:34,398
to just how close a shave
this whole episode had been,
575
00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:39,076
and yet it was his refusal
to accept the Nazi conquest of Europe
576
00:46:39,240 --> 00:46:42,676
that made the difference
between surrender and survival.
577
00:46:42,840 --> 00:46:46,150
All the qualities
which generally made him so impossible -
578
00:46:46,320 --> 00:46:52,555
his pig-headed obstinacy, his low boiling
point, his romantic belief in British history -
579
00:46:52,720 --> 00:46:57,953
were now, in the black days of May,
exactly what the country needed.
580
00:47:00,560 --> 00:47:04,758
In the days ahead,
Churchill learned that, against all predictions,
581
00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:09,232
a quarter of a million British troops
had been evacuated from Dunkirk
582
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:11,470
in a thousand little ships,
583
00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:16,191
the core of the army that would return
almost exactly four years later.
584
00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:22,992
It was his speech, broadcast
to the country a few days later, in June 1940,
585
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:27,438
which was, as one MP said,
"Worth a thousand guns
586
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:30,398
"and the speeches of a thousand years".
587
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:35,632
(CHURCHILL) We shall go on to the end.
588
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:40,590
We shall fight in France,we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
589
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:45,959
we shall fight with growing confidenceand growing strength in the air.
590
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:50,759
We shall defend our islandwhatever the cost may be.
591
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:55,596
We shall fight on the beaches,we shall fight on the landing grounds,
592
00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:59,833
we shall fight in the fieldsand in the streets.
593
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:02,275
We shall fight in the hills.
594
00:48:02,440 --> 00:48:04,590
We shall never surrender.
595
00:48:07,040 --> 00:48:11,352
This kind of indefatigable defiance
was why George Orwell,
596
00:48:11,520 --> 00:48:14,478
for all his mistrust
of Churchill's conservatism,
597
00:48:14,640 --> 00:48:18,918
was so relieved that at last Britain
had a leader who realised,
598
00:48:19,080 --> 00:48:23,039
as he wrote,
"That wars were won by fighting".
599
00:48:24,080 --> 00:48:27,117
Although the socialist
and the old aristocrat were so different,
600
00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:30,078
though one loved the empire
and the other detested it,
601
00:48:30,240 --> 00:48:33,550
both understood
that those differences were nothing
602
00:48:33,720 --> 00:48:39,158
compared with what separated them
both from the Nazis and the defeatists.
603
00:48:41,080 --> 00:48:44,914
Orwell's TB at this stage
was still undiagnosed,
604
00:48:45,080 --> 00:48:50,473
but his coughing fits were bad enough for his
application to join the army to be rejected.
605
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:53,871
Instead, he broadcast
propaganda for the BBC
606
00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:57,589
and served as a sergeant
in the Home Guard.
607
00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:01,912
During the Blitz, there were the two of them,
608
00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:06,631
in the thick of the action,
drawn like small boys to danger.
609
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:12,432
Orwell, someone said, felt at home
amidst the bombs, bravery and danger.
610
00:49:12,600 --> 00:49:16,912
Churchill was supposed to sleep somewhere
safe, like the Cabinet War Rooms,
611
00:49:17,080 --> 00:49:21,596
but to the horror of his staff,
he kept going back to Number Ten.
612
00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:24,991
Sometimes he'd climb on the roof
to see the "fireworks".
613
00:49:31,040 --> 00:49:36,956
Churchill and Orwell both drew on a vision
of British history for why we were fighting,
614
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:39,475
but they were different visions.
615
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:43,155
Churchill's was more like
a Shakespearean history play,
616
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:46,471
with the war leader
stalking through the night camp,
617
00:49:46,640 --> 00:49:49,871
drinking the affection of ordinary people.
618
00:49:50,040 --> 00:49:53,715
George Orwell looked around
at the millions of ordinary heroes,
619
00:49:53,880 --> 00:49:57,031
air raid wardens,
the Women's Volunteer Service,
620
00:49:57,200 --> 00:50:01,910
and saw the real heirs to Cromwell,
the Levellers and the Chartists.
621
00:50:02,080 --> 00:50:05,755
The working people
of Britain were not taking on the Luftwaffe
622
00:50:05,920 --> 00:50:11,756
to make the nation safe for the likes of Lord
Halifax and the owners of country houses,
623
00:50:11,920 --> 00:50:16,152
but to create a nation
that would finally help the miners of Wigan,
624
00:50:16,320 --> 00:50:21,394
and millions like them, have their share
of the common decencies of life.
625
00:50:23,120 --> 00:50:26,510
The trouble was the way
that war had to be won -
626
00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:29,114
not by the people's army of old England,
627
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:34,195
but by the people's army
of the United States and the Soviet Union.
628
00:50:34,360 --> 00:50:36,510
Somewhere in the pit of his stomach,
629
00:50:36,680 --> 00:50:41,037
Churchill was not a lot happier
about this than Orwell,
630
00:50:41,200 --> 00:50:47,753
but if being a junior partner to America
was the price for defeating fascism, so be it.
631
00:50:50,480 --> 00:50:55,076
Churchill was, in any case,
less of a Little Englander than Orwell.
632
00:50:55,240 --> 00:51:00,678
He loved the punch-in-the-ribs gusto
of America as much as Orwell flinched at it.
633
00:51:00,840 --> 00:51:05,914
For Churchill, democracy was a big,
expansive transatlantic thing.
634
00:51:06,080 --> 00:51:13,270
For Orwell, democracy American-style
was just a species of carnivorous capitalism.
635
00:51:15,240 --> 00:51:19,233
For Britain, when the war ended,
one thing was clear -
636
00:51:19,400 --> 00:51:23,473
if war had meant dying together,
peace was going to mean living together,
637
00:51:23,640 --> 00:51:28,839
not in the slums of Britain, but in a country
where everyone had a fighting chance.
638
00:51:29,640 --> 00:51:33,633
Newspapers carrythe astonishing news to an amazed public.
639
00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:36,837
Let's face it,whoever imagined such a result?
640
00:51:37,000 --> 00:51:38,991
Labour Landslide... I
641
00:51:39,160 --> 00:51:43,392
In the General Election,
Churchill received the thanks of the nation
642
00:51:43,560 --> 00:51:45,915
by being handed a tremendous drubbing.
643
00:51:46,080 --> 00:51:49,914
Labour took office
with a huge mandate for reform.
644
00:51:50,080 --> 00:51:56,189
The socialist press greeted the triumph
as the coming of the New Jerusalem.
645
00:51:59,200 --> 00:52:05,719
But instead of joining the Hallelujah Chorus,
Orwell, like Churchill, was profoundly worried
646
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:11,079
about a new world order
where we would be slaves in another way.
647
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:17,956
(CHURCHILL) From Stettin in the Balticto Trieste in the Adriatic,
648
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:22,636
an Iron Curtainhas descended across the continent.
649
00:52:22,800 --> 00:52:26,634
Behind that linelie all the capitals...
650
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:30,236
(RADIO)... Faeroes, Fair Isle,Bailey, Hebrides, Cromarty,
651
00:52:30,400 --> 00:52:33,073
Forties, Forth, Tyne, Dogger.
652
00:52:33,240 --> 00:52:37,870
Winds moderate, variable,mainly westerly, gradually becoming...
653
00:52:38,040 --> 00:52:41,999
To clear his head
of the static hum of post-war London,
654
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:46,597
Orwell went as far away
as he could without actually leaving Britain,
655
00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:51,072
to the very edge of the kingdom,
the Hebridean island of Jura.
656
00:52:51,240 --> 00:52:55,950
No electricity, no telephone,
post twice a week, maybe.
657
00:52:56,120 --> 00:52:58,918
And it was here,
in a remote cottage,
658
00:52:59,080 --> 00:53:02,072
typing in bed
with the machine on his knees,
659
00:53:02,240 --> 00:53:04,595
knowing he hadn't much longer to live,
660
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:09,515
that Orwell concentrated on what
mattered most to him, and to Britain -
661
00:53:09,680 --> 00:53:13,434
the fate of freedom
in the age of superpowers.
662
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:16,954
As Churchill issued his grim warnings,
663
00:53:17,120 --> 00:53:22,319
Orwell created a common or garden
plain man's Winston - Winston Smith.
664
00:53:22,480 --> 00:53:25,756
The year was 1948.
665
00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:34,992
... The only love is for Big Brother.
666
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:37,799
The only laughter,in triumph over a defeated enemy.
667
00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:40,758
No art, no science,no literature, no enjoyment.
668
00:53:40,920 --> 00:53:45,835
But always and only, Winston,there will be the thrill of power.
669
00:53:46,000 --> 00:53:48,036
To picture the future,
670
00:53:48,200 --> 00:53:52,990
imagine a boot stampingon a human face... forever.
671
00:53:56,360 --> 00:54:01,559
When we think of "1984",
most of us think of the tyranny of drabness
672
00:54:01,720 --> 00:54:04,871
and mass obedience ruled by Big Brother,
673
00:54:05,040 --> 00:54:11,195
an upside-down world of doublespeak
where war is peace and lies are truth.
674
00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:15,512
But Orwell's last masterpiece
is most powerful and most lyrical
675
00:54:15,680 --> 00:54:19,150
when it describes
Winston's resistance to dictatorship,
676
00:54:19,320 --> 00:54:23,313
a guerrilla action fought
not with guns and barricades,
677
00:54:23,480 --> 00:54:28,952
but by literally taking liberties, reclaiming
the ordinary pleasures of humanity -
678
00:54:29,120 --> 00:54:34,717
a walk in the country, an act of love,
the singing of an old nursery rhyme.
679
00:54:35,880 --> 00:54:38,997
Winston Smith did all these forbidden things,
680
00:54:39,160 --> 00:54:44,075
prompted by a dim memory of a time
when they were all absolutely normal.
681
00:54:44,240 --> 00:54:48,916
The last refuge of freedom
against Big Brother is memory.
682
00:54:49,080 --> 00:54:55,792
The greatest horror of "1984"
is the dictator's attempt to wipe out history.
683
00:54:58,360 --> 00:55:02,672
Churchill and Orwell shared
this romantic devotion to the past,
684
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:06,116
the belief that
it was the treasure house of freedom
685
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:10,273
in an age dictated to
by bureaucrats and boardrooms.
686
00:55:10,440 --> 00:55:13,512
It was what made
the aristocrat and the socialist,
687
00:55:13,680 --> 00:55:18,754
on the face of it such an impossible couple,
the most unlikely of allies.
688
00:55:20,920 --> 00:55:25,311
George Orwell died in 1950. He was 46.
689
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:29,598
The very last thing he wrote
for publication was about Winston Churchill,
690
00:55:29,760 --> 00:55:33,116
a review of his war memoir,
"Their Finest Hour".
691
00:55:33,280 --> 00:55:37,512
Though you'd expect him
to be repelled by Churchill's warrior heroics,
692
00:55:37,680 --> 00:55:41,992
he bestows on the book the greatest
compliment he could think of,
693
00:55:42,160 --> 00:55:47,314
that it read like the work
of a human being, not a public figure.
694
00:55:47,480 --> 00:55:52,554
And it was a verdict shared by the thousands
who lined the streets of London
695
00:55:52,720 --> 00:55:56,838
when Churchill finally died in 1965.
696
00:55:59,720 --> 00:56:06,478
When it counted, neither Churchill nor Orwell
did the predictable thing, toed the party line.
697
00:56:06,640 --> 00:56:09,359
More important was their common belief
698
00:56:09,520 --> 00:56:14,196
that if Britain was to have a distinctive
future in the age of super-states,
699
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:18,512
it had better keep faith
with the best traditions in its long history,
700
00:56:18,680 --> 00:56:23,595
the history that tied together
social justice with bloody-minded liberty.
701
00:56:25,720 --> 00:56:29,713
But history ought never
to be confused with nostalgia.
702
00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:34,112
It's written, not to revere the dead,
but to inspire the living.
703
00:56:34,280 --> 00:56:38,398
It's our cultural bloodstream,
the secret of who we are,
704
00:56:38,560 --> 00:56:42,758
telling us to let go of the past
even as we honour it,
705
00:56:42,920 --> 00:56:48,119
to lament what ought to be lamented,
to celebrate what should be celebrated.
706
00:56:48,280 --> 00:56:53,115
And if in the end that history
turns out to reveal itself as a patriot,
707
00:56:53,280 --> 00:56:57,990
I think that neither Churchill nor Orwell
would have minded that very much,
708
00:56:58,160 --> 00:57:01,596
and, as a matter of fact, neither do I.
70039
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