Nineteen Eighty-Four

15 Sep, 2022 820 English and Old English literatures

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.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

  • David Dwan No other episodes
    Professor of English Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Oxford
  • Lisa Mullen No other episodes
    Teaching Associate in Modern Contemporary Literature at the University of Cambridge
  • John Bowen 6 episodes
    Professor of English Literature at the University of York

Reading list

  • George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics
    Kristin Bluemel (Palgrave, 2004)
  • George Orwell
    Gordon Bowker (Abacus, 2004)
  • George Orwell and Religion
    Michael G. Brennan (Bloomsbury, 2016)
  • Dystopia: A Natural History
    Gregory Claeys (Oxford University Press, 2018)
  • Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain
    Stefan Collini (Oxford University Press, 2006)
  • George Orwell: English Rebel
    Robert Colls (Oxford University Press, 2013)
  • George Orwell: A Life
    Bernard Crick (Secker & Warburg, 1980)
  • Orwell on Jura: Locating Nineteen Eighty-Four
    Paul Delany (University of Toronto Quarterly, 30.1, 2011)
  • Liberty, Equality and Humbug: Orwell's Political Ideals
    David Dwan (Oxford University Press, 2018)
  • On Nineteen Eighty-Four: Orwell and Our Future
    Abbott Gleason, Jack Goldsmith and Martha C. Nussbaum (eds.) (Princeton University Press, 2005)
  • Why Orwell Matters
    Christopher Hitchens (Basic, 2002)
  • The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984
    Dorian Lynskey (Picador, 2019)
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four
    George Orwell (introduction by John Bowen) (Oxford World's Classics, 2021)
  • A Life in Letters
    George Orwell (ed. Peter Davison) (Penguin, 2011)
  • Orwell's Politics
    John Newsinger (Macmillan, 1999)
  • Orwell, Freud, and 1984
    Paul Roazen (Virginia Quarterly Review, 54, 1978)
  • Orwell: The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of 'St. George' Orwell
    John Rodden (Oxford University Press, 1989)
  • Orwell's Cough
    John Ross (One World, 2012)
  • Orwell: The Life
    D. J. Taylor (Chatto & Windus, 2003)
  • On Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Biography
    D. J. Taylor (Abrams Press, 2019)
  • The Cambridge Companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four
    Nathan Waddell (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
  • Remembering Orwell
    Stephen Wadhams (ed.) (Penguin, 1984)
  • Orwell
    Raymond Williams (Fontana, 1971)
  • Or Orwell: Writing and Democratic Socialism
    Alex Woloch (Harvard University Press, 2016)
  • Orwell and the Left
    Alex Zwerdling (Yale University Press, 1974)

Related episodes

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

Programme ID: m001bz77

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001bz77

Auto-category: 823.912 (Dystopian fiction)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello, Doublethink, Thought Police, Room 101, Big Brother is watching you.