3: Homage to Catalonia
'I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler "history stopped in 1936", at which he nodded in immediate understanding. We were both thinking of totalitarianism in general, but more particularly of the Spanish Civil War ... I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written.'
Orwell, like many of his generation, enlisted to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. Tonight Arena tells of Orwell's war.
It begins as a heroic crusade for a beleaguered socialist state, and ends with disillusion and betrayal, with Orwell fleeing across the Spanish frontier, a wounded and wanted man. with Stafford Cottman
Victor Alba , Enrique Ardroer Ramon Jurado and Professor Bernard Crick Producer ALAN YENTOB
Director NIGEL WILLIAMS