Reviews

Paul W.B. Marsden explains how he came to write his new novel which imagines George Orwell’s stay with Arthur Koestler in Blaenau Ffestiniog around Christmas 1945.

My new novel, Darkness in 1984, started out on Thursday 8 August 2024 when I was reading about the life and works of Arthur Koestler. I have acquired a habit of choosing an important writer, reading their biography and then systematically reading, in date order, their works. I ‘did’ Orwell the year before. That summer was my ‘Koestler phase’. My socialist dad had met Koestler in Manchester in 1960 and mentioned to me that he was a famous writer who had written an important novel exposing the Stalin show trials. That novel, Darkness at Noon, made the Hungarian-born writer into an international celebrity. My dad died in 1985 one year after I had studied Nineteen Eighty-Four for my O Level (which to my intense embarrassment I failed from a brain freeze after dozens of other exams).

So back to reading Koestler – I came across a passing reference in Michael Scammell’s 2009 biography to Koestler inviting the recently widowed George Orwell and his baby son, Richard, up to his remote cottage for Christmas 1945. It was the first peaceful Christmas for seven years and the first since Orwell’s wife, Eileen, had died in March, earlier that year. It took some digging to figure out precisely the location of the cottage, Bwlch Ocyn (perhaps pronounced as Bork Okin in English), near Blaenau Ffestiniog – just over an hour from where I live. The significance was that it stirred memories of several childhood camping and crab fishing holidays with my mum, dad and older sister, at Porthmadog and touring around Snowdonia.

Whilst I continued reading about Koestler the brief details of what happened during Orwell’s stay started to gnaw away at me. Animal Farm had just been published and was starting to sell well but at that Christmas Orwell was probably viewed more as a good journalist rather than a successful novelist. What did they discuss?

How did they celebrate Christmas? How did Koestler’s Darkness at Noon influence Orwell’s ideas for Nineteen Eighty-Four? Koestler lived with his brilliant and attractive girlfriend, Mamaine Paget, and in a match-making move they also invited for Christmas Mamaine’s twin sister, Celia Kirwan, who was recently separated from her alcoholic husband. There were a few more details gleaned from Mamaine’s published letters on the layout of the cottage, a couple of photographs and tantalising details of Orwell’s visit. In red Moleskine notebooks I keep a journal and I wrote that there was a possible play lurking from this passing reference about the Christmas 1945 gathering. As I imagined the conversations between these colourful characters I began to make notes. I realised that at that time Bertrand Russell lived just a few minutes away and how Koestler and Orwell were working on bringing Russell on board to back a new League for the Freedom and Dignity of Man, (which was to eventually splutter and fizzle out but influenced other similar organisations.)

I could hear in my head the nightmares that both Orwell and Koestler suffered from their experiences in the Spanish Civil War and I could see their indomitable spirit in action as they both did things rather than just talk about them. My notes fleshed out a plot with their arguments, teasing, joking, deep political discussions and the influence the twins had on their lives during the the stay. Koestler suffered deep depression and could be serious and abstract. Orwell was more phlegmatic and playful. Yet even as different characters, they were good friends for several years. An idea of a play became my first novel and despite 82 (no that’s not a typo) rejections by literary agents, I was honoured that the manuscript was awarded the Eyelands Magazine Winner for Historical Fiction for an unpublished novel last December. I went ahead and self-published it as a first dramatised novel about Orwell and Koestler.

What is fascinating is delving deep into the characters of real people and taking that knowledge to project what they might say in a certain situation and with another person. Connections and coincidences were thrown up: I realised that the twins’ birthday was 7 September, Koestler’s was 5 September and the birthday of Orwell’s wife, Eileen was 25 September and how a throw-away joyful comment on ‘September birthdays’ by Koestler could cause angst in Orwell. In the book’s excerpt below, Orwell retells how he had been shot on the Republican frontline near Aragón and Koestler had for months thought he would be executed as a prisoner of Franco. A interesting coincidence comes to light as Orwell speaks: 

‘… It was Twentieth of May when I was hit and for two months I could only whisper. The doctors said I would never get my voice back, but I did, obviously.’

There was silence between them with only the raindrops clattering through the oak leaves.

Koestler said: ‘Twentieth of May, ’37?’ George nodded staring down into the waters below. ‘They released me from Seville on the Thirteenth of May, ’37. Small world.’

George looked at him. ‘For months you thought you would get shot and were released. For months I’d got it into my head I couldn’t get shot and I was. Small world.’ He paused and with a mischievous look at Koestler said: ‘Although you were in the Comintern, and I was with the Trotskyite anarchists, P.O.U.M. If your lot got hold of me, they would have shot me.’ Koestler looked away and then down. ‘I was wrong. Very wrong. I should have known much earlier.’

I also imagined how Koestler and Orwell taking long walks around the nearby mountains could have damaged Orwell’s health (given his TB), if caught in a Welsh rainstorm. The dynamic of baby Richard in their midst provided opportunities to show Orwell’s caring parenting skills and contrast with Koestler’s point blank refusal to have children. I came to understand how Mamaine and Celia were two resilient women, one managing Koestler’s dark moods and the other offering friendship, not love, to a lonely and needy Orwell.

The challenge for any writer when they start on a first novel is whether they can successfully complete it. Will they get stuck halfway? Will it peter out? How to avoid padding dialogue and keep suspense and drama alive to turn the pages? Darkness in 1984 was a joy to write because of discovering such vivid characters and the conflicting emotions within friendships. Orwell’s patriotism, practicality and socialism was a pleasure to explore, and Koestler’s endless ideas and energy for progressive causes meant the storytelling felt as if I were inserted into Bwlch Ocyn’s front living room for a week, listening to them bicker and laugh. Koestler would have been talking as a theoretical socialist while Orwell would have been reminding him of the need for practical improvements to people’s lives.

On the way back from a family holiday in Abersoch in September, my wife and I did a slight detour to drive past the Bwlch Ocyn cottage (Well, I got lost and we happened to find ourselves close by …). On the spur of the moment I decided to visit and see if I could at least take some photographs from the outside that would help me picture scenes in my writing. When we drove along the main road to the turn off, I found that it was a narrow dirt track up a hill and I thought: ‘Oh blow it, why not knock on the front door?’ From the driveway, I passed through a gate and walked up a winding gravel path past ferns, a pond and apple trees. There was the whitewashed stone cottage with a slate roof. I noted the slight name change on the plaque to Bwlch Iocyn. I stood for a moment, wondering what I was going to say, when I realised the timber front door was wide open and that I was probably being watched. As I got closer, an older woman appeared, with that typical British polite smile and knitted brow reserved for complete strangers. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Hello?’ She pursed her lips. ‘I’m awfully sorry to just turn up like this. Is this Arthur Koestler’s home? I am a writer and …’ Mrs Brown turned and bellowed into the cottage: ‘Dear, it’s another Koestler fan.’ My first thought was to say: ‘And a George Orwell fan,’ but I didn’t get chance. My cheeks were now feeling very hot as a tall, older gentleman appeared and I started to babble my rather lame request when he said: ‘Oh, come in.’ Mr Brown explained that writers turning up was a not infrequent occurrence. I stood in the wide living room with oak beamed ceiling and inglenook fireplace. I felt incredulous. It was just as Mamaine had described in her letters from eighty years ago. ‘Do you want to have a look round?’ ‘Well, that’s very kind,’ I mumbled. ‘Er, yes please, if it’s no trouble.’

Mr Brown guided me around to the back dining room with the magnificent window looking out on to Welsh mountains and pointed to where Mamaine had sat as she read a book whilst leaning into where the old kitchen used to be, to stir ox heart’s stew. I entered the floor-to-roof library with its minstrel’s gallery. I could see the room where Orwell and Richard would have slept and I looked out on to the back garden where Mamaine grew vegetables they ate that Christmas. I followed in a daze through the new kitchen with a narrow doorway set in the side of the fireplace and, lo and behold, I was in Koestler’s small study. I looked out of the window across fields to Blaenau Ffestiniog and imagined him scrawling his fountain pen as he wrote Thieves in the Night.I can’t thank Mr and Mrs Brown enough for their hospitality that day and the willingness to embrace a random, unknown writer who turned up uninvited on the doorstep. I identified the typical footpaths around the hills and fields full of sheep that Koestler would have taken Orwell. They would have climbed Big Manod and the locals in the Oakley Arms pub may have told them of the strange convoys that arrived at night during wartime with the rumours of things being taken down into the old mine workings for storage. After the war, it was revealed that paintings from London’s National Gallery were brought up and taken by hand-hauled, narrow-gauge railway down into the old mines for safekeeping from Nazi bombs and the likely invasion. On those walks, I could well imagine that Orwell would have stood and breathed in the clean, breezy air and ached to find such a place of solitude and wilderness for himself, away from the polluted air and sooty grime of bombed-out London. Perhaps he could see Koestler and Mamaine had found happiness and imagined finding himself a new wife and living in the countryside? He certainly was attracted to Celia and quickly proposed to her when they were back in London (she said, ‘no’ – twice, but remained firm friends with him for the rest of his life).

I have tried to be faithful to the characters, (including their flaws), the actual timeline of known events and used real quotes to give an authenticity to the book. It is still historical fiction and minor details have been changed, such as adding a scene of Russell meeting Orwell that took place a few weeks later. However, I hope aficionado readers of Orwell will find Darkness in 1984 believable and will encourage general readers to rediscover Orwell and Koestler’s works, as they both have left powerful legacies that resonate in today’s disturbing politics.

SOURCES USED AS BACKGROUND FOR THE NOVEL
Bankes, A. (2024) The Quality of Love: Twin Sisters at the Heart of the Century,
Richmond: Duckworth Books
Bowker, G. (2003) George Orwell, London: Little, Brown
Cesarani, D. (1998) Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind, London: William
Heinemann
Crick, B. (1980) George Orwell: A Life, London: Secker & Warburg
Fyvel, T.R. (1983 [1982]) George Orwell: A Personal Memoir. London:
Hutchinson
Goodman, C. (ed.) (1985) Living with Koestler: Mamaine Koestler’s Letters (1945-
51), London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Koestler, A. (1937) Spanish Testament, Left Book Club Edition, London: Victor
Gollancz
Koestler, A. (1947 [1940]) Darkness at Noon, London: Penguin
Koestler, A. (1991 [1941]) Scum of the Earth, London: Eland
Koestler, A. (1946) Thieves in the Night, London: Macmillan

Koestler, A. and C. (1984) Stranger on the Square, London: Hutchinson
Orwell, G. (2013 [1938]) Homage to Catalonia, London: Penguin Books
Orwell, G. (1987 [1945]) Animal Farm, London: Penguin Books
Orwell, G. (1989 [1949]) Nineteen Eight-Four, London: Penguin Books
Orwell, G. (2010) Diaries, Davison, Peter (ed.) London: Penguin Books
Orwell, S. and Angus, I. (eds) (1970) George Orwell Essays, Journalism and Letters,
Vol. IV, In Front of your Nose 1945-1950, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin
Books
Packer, G. (ed.) (2008) George Orwell: Narrative Essays, London: Harvill Secker
Rees, R. (1962) George Orwell: Fugitive from the Camp of Victory, Carbondale,
Southern Illinois University Press
Scammell, M. (2009) Koestler, The Indispensable Intellectual, London: Faber &
Faber
Shelden, M. (1991) Orwell: The Authorised Biography, London: William
Heinemann
The Observer (2003) Orwell, The Observer Years, London: Atlantic Books

Also accessed were copies of the ‘League for the Freedom and Dignity of Man’
typed by Orwell and correspondence between Orwell and Koestler on the league.
These are held in UCL Library Services and Heritage Collections, Edinburgh
University Library

NOTE ON THE CONTRIBUTOR
Paul W.B. Marsden has sketched out further novels based upon George Orwell’s
life in World War Two and on the island of Jura. He has already written Making
A Moveable Feast, dramatising the daily conversations of Ernest Hemingway and
his first wife, Hadley Richardson, in Paris, in 1922. Paul is a former member of
parliament and now works in construction. He is married to Elena and has three
grown-up children. Further details of Paul’s biography and his other writings can
be found at https://www.paulwbmarsden.com.