The Happy Child (II)

Further to my piece on George Orwell’s son Richard and his memories of his father, which John Carey had written about for The Times, I have received an email from Dione Venables at Finlay Publisher:-

It seems that The Times has stolen our thunder well and truly on the subject of Richard Blair. 

They are indicating that he is communicating in public for the very first time but they are not telling the truth.

Last year I managed to persuade a very shy Richard Blair to write a memoir for our website FINLAY PUBLISHER.  We are entirely devoted to Orwell as a subject; his novels, articles, diaries ­ and the man himself.  We publish six times a year an essay by the cream of Orwellian academics and Richard¹s poignant and charming essay, published on the 31st January 2009 is still on view on our website until the 30th March when it will be archived (still online) and will continue to be read there.  It will be followed by an essay Orwell and Sport by Professor Peter Davison.

I would advise you to log on and have a read.  I have to point out to The Times that Richard has always been too shy to write a word on the subject of his family and I had to work hard to get him to agree to do this for us -but the rapturous reception his simple essay has earned by the Internet Public has given him the confidence to accept both media interviews and the on-coming live interview at The Times Literary Festival at Oxford.  Had I not persuaded this charming man that what he has to say is important to a lot of people out there, you may be sure that he would never have agreed to be interviewed by anyone, even the great John Carey ­ it has, after all taken him 64 years to put his head above the parapet!

I had been curious about what became of Richard Blair after the death of his father, and was interested to read the memoir. 

 I would recommend the Finlay Publisher site for Orwell fans.  I particularly enjoyed an article by the recently deceased Professor Bernard Crick on Orwell's humour. It ends with this paragraph:-

[Orwell was] the true humanist who sees both the tragedy and the humour of life. Please read Ninteen Eighty-Four again thinking that it is a Swiftian satire on the abuse of power and not a morbid prophecy.

Comments

[Frank Smith]

It was a prophecy if, as seems to be the case, the current generation of lefties in power regard it as an instruction manual.