Just less than two years on from our visit by Richad Blair, better known as George Orwell’s son, we were privileged to have as our guest speaker Quentin Kopp, a trustee of the Orwell Society, whose own father Georges was Orwell’s commander in the Spanish Civil War.
If we were talking musically, this contribution could well have been entitled the Enigma Variations. George Orwell himself was famously enigmatic, and Quentin Kopp began his talk to us by admitting that his father was “by many accounts an enigma.
He was, we were told, “a talented engineer and a poor businessman.”
Some people have gone even further. In his 2013 biography, author Marc Wildemeersch says bluntly: “Georges Kopp is a complex figure and often lied and exaggerated about his life and career.”
Born in St Petersburg to Russian parents, and educated in Belgium, George (10th October 1902 to 15th July 1951) was Orwell’s commander during his time as a volunteer with the POUM militia column in the fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). He first saw active service on the Aragon front near Zaragoza.
Our speaker Quentin Kopp told his similarly aged audience: “We were a lucky generation – none of us had to go to war, The generation of our fathers and grandfathers were not so fortunate. My father was one of hundreds of thousands of people who did not have that choice.
Kopp was one of thousands of volunteers who fought in Spain to oppose fascism and was imprisoned by its own side under the banner of an ideological purge imposed by the NKVD directed by Stalin. Kopp was interrogated, tortured and moved between prisons and detention camps in and around Barcelona, largely out of sight.
Quentin Kopp is chairman of a pioneering company creating a new powerful material principally made of wood. His second career was as an independentr management consltant focussing on improving business performance through improved development of people and processes and has worked with businessed around the world.
He also supervised Masters students in his area of expertise at Warwick University. His earlier career was spent in human resources and managing director roles in large engineering and clothing groups. George Kopp met Quentin’s mother through having been Orwell’s platoon commander in Spain.