George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was first published in 1949, 75 years ago. Set in what was then the future date of 1984, it depicts a brutally oppressive totalitarian state and the rebellion of one of its citizens, Winston Smith. In 1949, Nineteen Eighty-Four was as much about the period when it was written as it was about the imagined future. This two-fold relevance still applies 75 years on. The novel’s importance has not diminished; indeed, it could be argued that the opposite is the case. The book has never been more significant.
The word ‘Orwellian’ has established itself in our language as a term describing the sort of authoritarian culture depicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Few if any novels have added more words and phrases to the lexicon. ‘Big Brother’, ‘Room 101’, ‘Doublethink ’, ‘the Thought Police’: all these neologisms remain in common parlance. This is ironic considering Orwell’s deep distrust of aspects of popular culture and its connection to what he saw as the debasement of language.
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