“Issues that concentrated the minds of the Victorian bourgeoisie—vagrancy and begging, the publicness of the homeless, public sex, inebriation—have resurfaced in contemporary discourses of the purification of the city, considered as essential to its imagineering now as it had been in the past (Paddison and Sharp 92).
Orwell's Diaries
1. 8/26/1931: “The next day I went to Trafalgar Square and camped by the north wall, which is one of the recognized rendezvous of down and out people in London” (3).
2. 8/27/1931: At about eight in the morning we all had a shave in the Trafalgar Square fountains…” (5).
3. Prostitution in the Square (24).
4. 5/31/1940: “Barbed wire entanglements are being put up at many strategic points, e.g. beside the Charles I statue in Trafalgar Square…” (277).
5. 7/5/1940: “The frightful outburst of fury by the German radio (if rightly reported, actually calling on the English people to hang Churchill in Trafalgar Square)…” (300).
6. 7/27/1942: “The crowd at the Second Front [Allied forces cooperating with the Russians leading up to D-Day] meeting in Trafalgar Square estimated at 40,000 in the rightwing papers and 60,000 in the leftwing. Perhaps 50,000 in reality. My spy reports that in spite of the present Communist line of ‘all power to Churchill”, the Communist speakers in fact attacked the Government very bitterly” (398).
2. 8/27/1931: At about eight in the morning we all had a shave in the Trafalgar Square fountains…” (5).
3. Prostitution in the Square (24).
4. 5/31/1940: “Barbed wire entanglements are being put up at many strategic points, e.g. beside the Charles I statue in Trafalgar Square…” (277).
5. 7/5/1940: “The frightful outburst of fury by the German radio (if rightly reported, actually calling on the English people to hang Churchill in Trafalgar Square)…” (300).
6. 7/27/1942: “The crowd at the Second Front [Allied forces cooperating with the Russians leading up to D-Day] meeting in Trafalgar Square estimated at 40,000 in the rightwing papers and 60,000 in the leftwing. Perhaps 50,000 in reality. My spy reports that in spite of the present Communist line of ‘all power to Churchill”, the Communist speakers in fact attacked the Government very bitterly” (398).
George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory (1961)
“He wanted, he said, to know about prison from the inside and he hoped that if he were drunk and disorderly in the East End he might manage to achieve this. Next day he reappeared very crestfallen. He had duly got drunk and been taken to police station. But once there he had received a fatherly talk, spent the night in a cell and had been let out the next morning with a cup of tea and some good advice” (Rees 136).
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
“We loitered the day in Trafalgar Square… (158).
A Clergyman's Daughter (1935)
A. Chapter 3: A Night on Trafalgar Square (“Square Tobies”)
B. “On the Square people are perpetually coming and going, more or less unnoticed. They arrive from nowhere with their drums and their bundles, camp for a few days and nights and then disappear as mysteriously as they came” (Orwell 202-203).
B. “On the Square people are perpetually coming and going, more or less unnoticed. They arrive from nowhere with their drums and their bundles, camp for a few days and nights and then disappear as mysteriously as they came” (Orwell 202-203).
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
“He walked up to Trafalgar Square. Hours and hours to kill. The National Gallery? Ah, shut long ago, of course. It would be. It was a quarter past seven. Three, four, five hours before he could sleep. He walked seven times round the square, slowly. Four times clockwise, three times widdershins. His feet were sore and most of the benches were empty, but he would not sit down. If he halted for an instant the longing for tobacco would come upon him. In the Charing Cross Road the teashops called like sirens. Once the glass door of a Lyons swung open, letting out a wave of hot cake-scented air. It almost overcame him. After all, why not go in? You could sit there for nearly an hour. A cup of tea twopence, two buns a penny each. He had fourpence halfpenny, counting the Joey. But no! That bloody Joey! The girl at the cash desk would titter. In a vivid vision he saw the girl at the cash desk, as she handled his threepenny-bit, grin sidelong at the girl behind the cake-counter. They’d know it was your last threepence. No use. Shove on. Keep moving” (66).
.
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The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
“Of course one ought not to imagine that the prevailing bad physique is due solely to unemployment, for it is probable that the physical average has been declining all over England for a long time past, and not merely among the unemployed in the industrial areas. This cannot be proved statistically, but it is a conclusion that is forced upon you if you use your eyes, even in rural places and even in a prosperous town like London. On the day when King George V’s body passed through London on its way to Westminster, I happened to be caught for an hour or two in the crowd in Trafalgar Square. It was impossible, looking about one then, not to be struck by the physical degeneracy of modern England. The people surrounding me were not working-class people for the most part; they were the shopkeeper — commercial-traveller type, with a sprinkling of the well-to-do. But what a set they looked! Puny limbs, sickly faces, under the weeping London sky!” (97).
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
“The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery hidden by the curve of the earth's surface. Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen—all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs” (231-232).
1984 (1950)
1. (Winston’s Walk) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2piiBafkjVY
2. “The paint was plastered so thick on her face that it looked as though it might crack like a cardboard mask. There were streaks of white in her hair, but the truly dreadful detail was that her mouth had fallen a little open, revealing nothing except a cavernous blackness. She had no teeth at all……..But I went ahead and did it just the same” (59-60).
3. Victory Square
4. Henri Lefebvre: “Monumental ‘durability’ is unable, however, to achieve a complete illusion. To put it in what pass for modern terms, its credibility is never total. It replaces a brutal reality with a materially realized appearance; reality is changed into appearance” (141).
5. “Enormous fluted column” and “Big Brother” statue (95)
6. Oliver Cromwell (95)
7. St. Martin’s Church (95)
8. “Lions at the base of the monument” (95)
2. “The paint was plastered so thick on her face that it looked as though it might crack like a cardboard mask. There were streaks of white in her hair, but the truly dreadful detail was that her mouth had fallen a little open, revealing nothing except a cavernous blackness. She had no teeth at all……..But I went ahead and did it just the same” (59-60).
3. Victory Square
4. Henri Lefebvre: “Monumental ‘durability’ is unable, however, to achieve a complete illusion. To put it in what pass for modern terms, its credibility is never total. It replaces a brutal reality with a materially realized appearance; reality is changed into appearance” (141).
5. “Enormous fluted column” and “Big Brother” statue (95)
6. Oliver Cromwell (95)
7. St. Martin’s Church (95)
8. “Lions at the base of the monument” (95)