2.1.41

The rightwing reaction is now in full swing, and Margesson’s entry into the Cabinet is no doubt a deliberate cash-in on Wavell’s victory in Egypt.  Comically enough a review of Wavell’s life of Allenby which I wrote some months ago was printed in Horizon just at the time when the news of Sidi Barrani came through.  I said in the review that as Wavell held so important a command the chief interest of the book was the light it threw on his own intellect, and left it to be inferred that I didn’t think much of this.  So the laugh was on me – though, God Knows, I am glad enough to have been wrong. [1]

The word “blitz” now used everywhere to mean any kind of attack on anything.  Cf. “strafe” in the last war.  “Blitz” is not yet used as a verb, a development I am expecting.

[1] For Orwell’s review, published in December 1940, see 712.  General Wavell’s forces broke through the Italian lines under General Graziani at Sidi Barrani on 9 December 1940.  In the March issue of Horizon, the Editorial Comment concluded with this paragraph: ‘To the Spectator, and the many Horizon readers who have objected to Orwell’s review of Wavell’s Allenby, the Editor would like to point out that the review was written in the early summer, at a time when, after France, the title of general was unreassuring, and when Orwell had no inkling that the biographer of Allenby was to prove greater than his subject.  It was several months before space could be found for it, and Mr. Orwell states that he was mistaken about General Wavell, and is glad he was mistaken, sorry to have made the mistake’ (162).  For correspondence in The Spectator occasioned by this review, see Orwell’s letter in reply, 778. Peter Davison