Gibson Blog (![[info]](http://klab.lv/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small} gibson) rakstīja,@ 2009-12-25 05:01:00 |
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GOOD THING I'M NOT AN ACADEMIC
Had planned to sort through all the responses to my Orwell quote query and lay the result out here, but it turns out that I am a working novelist (among other things). So here's what I would tell you if you ran into me on the street and asked me about it: I doubt Orwell wrote it. It may have been cobbled together from a line in his essay on nationalism, and another, quoting Kipling, in his essay on Kipling. Weirdly, the very nearest thing to it is an authentic Churchill quote. As to how it became widely accepted as an Orwell quote, your guess is as good as mine. A great many of the people who most enjoy quoting it, I imagine, would actually be happier with it if it were a Churchill quote.
Had planned to sort through all the responses to my Orwell quote query and lay the result out here, but it turns out that I am a working novelist (among other things). So here's what I would tell you if you ran into me on the street and asked me about it: I doubt Orwell wrote it. It may have been cobbled together from a line in his essay on nationalism, and another, quoting Kipling, in his essay on Kipling. Weirdly, the very nearest thing to it is an authentic Churchill quote. As to how it became widely accepted as an Orwell quote, your guess is as good as mine. A great many of the people who most enjoy quoting it, I imagine, would actually be happier with it if it were a Churchill quote.
