One thing it is not is a work of propaganda. Orwell is too honest for that. He makes his own biases absolutely clear at several points throughout the book, and urges us to remember that his knowledge of events is only from one particular point of view. He also backs everything up with evidence – his own observations mostly, or quoting from books and newspaper articles to discuss events beyond his own personal experience. And, while he has a natural sympathy for the group he joined, the POUM, he is also quite critical of them in some places, and the same applies to other groups – praise where it’s due, but criticism when he feels it’s warranted. The fascists, of course, don’t get exactly neutral treatment, as you’d expect from someone who signed up to fight them, but other than that his descriptions come across as quite even-handed.

In some ways, of course, this is a book of its time, but I wouldn’t say it’s only of historical interest. I have no particular interest in the Spanish Civil War, but I liked this book when I first read it years ago, and enjoyed the second reading too, including the excellent introduction by Lionel Trilling. Beyond the historically specific parts about 1930s Spain, this is a wonderful depiction of the reality of war – not so much the blood and guts (though there’s some of that) but more the incredible boredom and discomfort. There are memorable descriptions of hunger, of lice on the testicles, of cold, sentry duty, incompetence and mixups, unsubstantiated rumours and panics, petty pleasures and embarrassing fears.

Then there’s Orwell’s writing, which is always elegant and sometimes sublime. I particularly loved the final passage, when he is returning to England after months of hardship in Spain, a bullet in the neck, being hunted down by his own comrades for the crime of being POUM instead of PSUC, seeing friends killed and jailed. Then, abruptly, he finds himself on a train meandering through southern England:

It is difficult when you pass that way, especially when you are peacefully recovering from sea-sickness with the plush cushions of a boat-train carriage under your bum, to believe that anything is really happening anywhere. Earthquakes in Japan, famines in China, revolutions in Mexico? Don’t worry, the milk will be on the doorstep tomorrow morning, the New Statesman will come out on Friday.  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.

Yes, I went around bookshops looking for my book on the shelves. And I started taking photos of it. Here it is, for example, sitting on the shelf in my local bookshop, Prospero’s Books in Crouch End. I won’t show you the whole album – like holiday snaps, they all look a bit the same after a while. I think you get the idea.

OK, so it’s not very cool. It’s not something I could picture Salman Rushdie or Iam McEwan doing. But I enjoyed it!

Edit: As well as being uncool, it’s also turned out to be an expensive habit. With all that looking in bookshops, I ended up buying The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I hope the novelty wears off soon, otherwise I’ll end up buying more books than I sell.