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One of those in control was Winston Churchill. After 20 years away from the Tories, he was now back in the fold as Chancellor of the Exchequer, busy crushing the General Strike.
其中一個掌權者就是溫斯頓·丘吉爾。自脫離保守黨20年后，他重新回歸，做了財政大臣，忙于鎮壓大罷工。
Southwold was not exactly a hotbed of socialism, which only made Eric all the more determined to expiate the sins of empire.
索斯沃爾德并非社會主義完美的溫床，它只是讓艾瑞克下定決心為帝國的罪惡贖罪。
In a world where pretty much everyone knew and kept their place, he couldn't wait to lose his.
在這個世界上，每個人都知道自己的身份并想保住地位，他卻想拋棄自己的地位。
Most people who are restless with their lot in life wanted to rise above their station. Eric was impatient to sink all the way to the bottom.
大多數人都不滿于自己的命運，希望能夠提高他們的身份。艾瑞克迫不及待地想來到社會最底層。
There was something almost franciscan about his nosedive into squalor.
這樣體悟骯臟污穢的行為，有些類似方濟會員的做法。
It wasn't just a renunciation of middle-class respectability, it was the calculated bodily embrace of everything that repelled the fastidious Eric -- muck, indescribably evil smells.
艾瑞克不僅放棄了中產階級的體面生活，而且刻意去親身體驗他曾避之不及的事物--淤泥，以及難以名狀的邪惡味道。
When he sold his clothes and bought a tramp's kit, he was making a point, at least to himself, that his life as a writer would start by plumbing the depths.
當他賣掉自己的衣服，換上流浪漢的裝備，他是在表明立場，至少對他自身而言，他作為一名作家的生活將由體驗苦難開始。
It was like St Catherine of Siena drinking a bowl of pus to show that nothing human was beneath her.
這好像錫耶納的圣凱瑟琳喝下一碗膿汁來證明她仁心濟世。
For two years, Blair did the Cook's tour of destitution, comprehensive, unrelenting, gruesomely anti-scenic.
兩年來，布萊爾看到了太多的貧困，它無處不在、如此無情，吞噬了世間的美好。
In the bathroom of one especially horrible doss house, or "Spike", he finally got down to basic truths.
在一間分外恐怖的小客棧，或稱"收容站"，在它的浴室里，他終于看清了事實的真相。
It was a disgusting sight. All the indecent secrets of our underwear were exposed.
這景象令人作嘔。內衣物的不堪暴露于人前。
The grime, the rents and patches, the bits of string doing duty for buttons, the layers upon layers of fragmentary garments, some of them mere collections of holes held together by dirt.
污漬、破洞、還有補丁，用來代替扣子的細繩，層層疊疊的殘破衣服，有些盡是窟窿，僅靠污垢粘著。
The room became a press of steaming nudity, the sweaty odours of the tramps competing with the sickly sub-faecal stench native to the spike.
流浪漢赤身裸體在室內擠作一團，熱汗連連，散發出的酸臭味與收容所固有的糞便味混在一起。
He didn't have to do it of course, he wasn't that hard up.
他其實不必這么做，他沒那么窘迫。
But there was never anything second hand about Blair, any more than there was about Churchill. Both were doers, not lookers.
但布萊爾的字典里沒有"二手"這個詞，丘吉爾也是如此。他們都是行動派，而非觀望者。
Whether in the trenches or the doss houses, they needed to live what they talked about.
無論是戰壕還是小客棧，他們要直接體驗曾經高談闊論的生活。
