George Orwell • 15 oktober 1940

• George Orwell (1903-1950) was een Britse schrijver en journalist. Van 1941-1943 werkte hij voor de op India gerichte Eastern Service van de BBC, waardoor hij de politieke en militaire ontwikkelingen op het vasteland op de voet volgde. Zijn dagboeken zijn gepubliceerd als Diaries. gedeeltes eruit zijn hier te lezen. De Nederlandse vertaling (van Nelleke van Maaren) is gepubliceerd in de reeks Privé Domein.

15.10.40
Writing this at Wallington, having been more or less ill for about a fortnight with a poisoned arm. Not much news – i.e only events of worldwide importance; nothing that has much affected me personally.

There are now 11 evacuee children in Wallington (12 arrived, but one ran away and had to be sent home). They come from the East End. One little girl, from Stepney, said that her grand-father had been bombed out seven times. They seem nice children and to be settling down quite well. Nevertheless there are the usual complaints against them in some quarters. E.g. of the little boy who is with Mrs. —–, aged seven: “He’s a dirty little devil, he is. He wets his bed and dirties his breeches. I’d rub his nose in it if I had charge of him, the dirty, little devil.”

Some murmurings about the number of Jews in Baldock. —– declares that Jews greatly predominate among the people sheltering in the Tubes. Must try and verify this.

Potato crop very good this year, in spite of the dry weather, which is just as well.