I really like the idea that we as readers, we're kind of intruding into Winston's thoughts as well. We are sort of being the bad guys in that way. That's all part of the paranoia. One of the things that's really important about 1984 is that it proves, you know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that literature can do things that other kinds of writing can't do. It can get inside your head, it can make you feel things and make you understand things in an almost instinctive way.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's (1903-1950) final novel, published in 1949, set in a dystopian London which is now found in Airstrip One, part of the totalitarian superstate of Oceania which is always at war and where the protagonist, Winston Smith, works at the Ministry of Truth as a rewriter of history: 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' The influence of Orwell's novel is immeasurable, highlighting threats to personal freedom with concepts he named such as doublespeak, thoughtcrime, Room 101, Big Brother, memory hole and thought police.
With
David Dwan
Professor of English Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Oxford
Lisa Mullen
Teaching Associate in Modern Contemporary Literature at the University of Cambridge
And
John Bowen
Professor of English Literature at the University of York
Producer: Simon Tillotson