George Orwell endured a case of tuberculosis and a near-death experience while writing Nineteen Eighty-Four. | Ivan Radic, Flickr // CC BY 2.0 George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four has given ...

The year 1984 came and went a generation ago, and the clocks did not strike 13. Big Brother’s face doesn’t stare down at us from giant posters. Masked police do not apprehend citizens guilty of ...

Superlatives may get people's attention, but they don't do much to reward it. So if one were to hazard, for example, that novelist Thomas Pynchon's foreword to the new Plume edition of "Nineteen ...

Seven decades ago, a middle-aged book reviewer and former Anzac digger was so mesmerised by a new novel that he urged his readers to waste no time in ordering copies of it. "I have just finished ...

This week's Berlin Wall ceremonies marked a golden moment in the history of that most benighted of cities. They also reminded us of the incredibly enduring power of Nineteen Eighty-Four: it's almost ...

My copy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has cardboard covers. Front and back, the book is decorated with cheesy reproduced paintings. Big Brother wears an evil goatee and eye makeup. A red ...

Like Marilyn and Elvis, George Orwell has had a long and profitable afterlife. Though he died in 1950 at the young age of 46, his last and best book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, is one of the most ...

Just 750 copies of this lovingly designed edition of George Orwell’s classic novel have been made, commemorating the original book’s enduring legacy This year, George Orwell’s seminal book Nineteen ...

Big Brother, the Thought Police, Room 101, newspeak. Even if you haven’t read the book, chances are you’ve heard at least one of these phrases, because elements of the nightmarish vision evoked in ...

George Orwell once said that Nineteen Eighty-Four “wouldn’t have been so gloomy if I had not been so ill”. But the truth is that Orwell, along with many other writers, found plenty to be gloomy about ...

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter George Orwell’s American ...