Publisher Description
Since its publication nearly seventy years ago, George Orwell’s 1984 has been regarded as one of the most influential novels of the modern age. Politicians have testified to its influence on their intellectual identities, rock musicians have made records about it, TV viewers watch a reality show named for it, and a White House spokesperson tells of “alternative facts.” The world we live in is often described as an Orwellian one, awash in inescapable surveillance and invasions of privacy. On 1984 dives deep into Orwell’s life to chart his earlier writings and key moments in his youth, such as his years at a boarding school that’s strict and charismatic headmaster shaped the idea of Big Brother. Taylor tells the story of the writing of the book, taking listeners to the Scottish island of Jura, where Orwell, newly famous thanks to Animal Farm but coping with personal tragedy and rapidly declining health, struggled to finish 1984. Published during the cold war—a term Orwell coined—Taylor elucidates the environmental influences on the book. Then he examines 1984’s post-publication life, including its role as a tool to understand our language, politics, and government.
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About D. J. Taylor
D.J. Taylor was born in 1960, went to Norwich School and St John’s College, Oxford, and is the author of two acclaimed biographies, Thackerary (1999), and Orwell: The Life, which won the Whitbread Biography Prize in 2003. He has written eleven novels, the most recent being The Windsor Faction (2013),joint winner of the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, Derby Day (2011),long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, At the Chime of a City Clock (2010), Ask Alice (2009) and Kept: A Victorian Mystery (2006).
David is also well known as a critic and reviewer, and his other books include A Vain Conceit: British Fiction in the 1980s (1989) and After the War: the Novel and England since 1945 (1993). His journalism appears in the Independent and the Independent on Sunday, the Guardian, The Tablet, the Spectator, the Wall Street Journal and, anonymously, in Private Eye. He is married to the novelist Rachel Hore. They have three sons and live in Norwich, UK.
About Charles Armstrong
Charles Armstrong is a narrator and actor whose theater work includes productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, and he was in the West End production of Round The Horne … Revisited. His television and film credits include Holby City, EastEnders, Head Over Heels, Poirot, The King’s Speech, and The Navigators. He has also recorded numerous voice-overs and was part of the BBC Radio Repertory.