Nineteen Eighty-Four

Big Brother is watching you … 1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party’s power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party’s department for propaganda, Winston Smith’s job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words ‘down with Big Brother’, his personal rebellion begins … George Orwell’s masterpiece is the definitive dystopian novel and one of the most influential works of the 20th century. It is as relevant today as it was when first published in 1949.

About the Author :
Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) (1903–1950) was born in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. The family moved to England in 1907 and in 1917 Orwell entered Eton, where he contributed regularly to the various college magazines. From 1922 to 1927 he served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, an experience that inspired his first novel Burmese Days. Several years of poverty followed. He lived in Paris for two years before returning to England, where he worked successively as a private tutor, schoolteacher and bookshop assistant, and contributed reviews and articles to a number of periodicals. At the end of 1936 Orwell went to Spain to fight for the Republicans and was wounded. Homage to Catalonia is his account of the civil war. He was admitted to a sanatorium in 1938 and from then on was never fully fit. During the Second World War he served in the Home Guard and worked for the BBC Eastern Service from 1941 to 1943. His unique political allegory, Animal Farm, was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with Nineteen Eighty-Four, which brought him world-wide fame. Andrew Wincott is a British actor, perhaps best known as the voice of Adam Macy in BBC Radio 4’s The Archers. He has performed in hundreds of dramas, serials, comedies and readings for BBC Radio including Book at Bedtime and the Afternoon Story and he has twice been a member of the BBC Radio Drama Company. Some of Andrew’s lead roles include Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre and Alec in Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

Review :
'I read it again, and again … right up there among my favourite books.' 'The book of the twentieth century … haunts us with an ever-darker relevance.'