By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Nineteen Eighty-Four is the best-known work of George Orwell (1903-50), who, as well as writing two of the most enduring novels of the 1940s, was also one of the greatest essayists of the first half of the twentieth century.
Orwell’s dystopian vision of a future world in which ‘thoughtcrime’ is real, the history books are altered to remove any inconvenient facts, and citizens are monitored at all times remains as relevant now as it was when it was first published in 1949, just one year before the author’s death.