iosephvs bibliothecarivs’s Reviews > Homage to Catalonia > Status Update

'...plain-clothes police had invaded our room at the hotel and searched it.... They had taken my diaries, all our books, (...) and all our letters. (Incidentally, they took away a number of letters I had received from readers. Some of them had not been answered.... If anyone who wrote to me about my last book, and who did not get an answer, happens to read these lines, will he please accept this as an apology?)

'No one who was in Barcelona then, or for months later, will forget the horrible atmosphere produced by fear, suspicion, hatred, censored newspapers, crammed jails, enormous food queues and prowling gangs of armed men.'

'...it was a queer feeling sitting on that roof. Sometimes I was merely bored with the whole affair, paid no attention to the hellish noise, and spent hours reading a succession of Penguin Library books which, luckily, I had bought a few days earlier; sometimes I was very conscious of the armed men watching me fifty yards away. It was a little like being in the trenches again.'