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A week today, Friday 8^th June, will be the 63^rd anniversary of the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Since its first publication in 1949 reportedly more than 25 million copies have been sold worldwide and Nineteen Eighty-Four is regularly cited as one of the best books of the 20^th century. The novel is the source of phrases now used as commonplace in the English language like ‘Big Brother’, ‘thought police’, ‘Room 101′, ‘doublethink’ and ‘newspeak’ and the cultural impact of 1984 has resonated into its imagined time setting and beyond. In the year 1984, Apple Macintosh launched their brand in a once only aired ad inspired by a 1984 film adaptation, more and more the book is used in the style of a cautionary tale upheld to warn against the introduction of a surveillance society. Almost every day Orwell’s arguably most famous work is referenced in the popular press. You can enjoy the anniversary of this much celebrated book with some reading on our website. The first chapter of 1984 is on our dedicated 1984 webpage, along with lots of other pieces about the book. These include some of Orwell’s own articles on language (‘Politics and the English Language’ and ‘In Front of Your Nose’), dystopian fiction (on Zamyatin’s WeWe and Arthur Koestler) and other subjects (‘Just Junk’ and ‘Pleasure Spots’). We also have plenty of other treats: the original reviews of 1984 by The Guardian and the New Statesman (by V. S. Pritchett), articles by Bernard Crick, Robert Harris, Robert McCrum and Ben Pimlott and a video Q&A with Mike Radford (director of the 1984 film version of 1984). You can also watch the BBC’s 1954 TV adaptation on YouTube (Wikipedia has some more information on the controversy around the broadcast).There’s much more on our website.

From the archive

‘Benefit of Clergy’ is Orwell’s analysis of Salvador Dali’s autobiography, his life and work and the difficulties of memoir writing. ‘Why I Write’ containing the Orwell Prize’s motto, ‘What I have most wanted to do… is to make political writing into an art’ was published in June 1946.

From elsewhere

The wartime diaries

This week’s entry was published on 30^th May 1942. Next week’s entry will be published on 4^th, 6^th, 7^th and 10^th June 1942. Don’t forget our other Orwell Diary blogs: his Hop-Picking Diary and The Road to Wigan Pier Diary. If you’ve got any suggestions about our website(s), we’d love to hear from you – email us on katriona.lewis@mediastandardstrust.org or follow us on Twitter.

We thoroughly enjoyed holding events at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival for the first time – and we hope that, via video, you enjoy them too.

• Orwell’s essay, ‘Hop-picking’, was first published by the New Statesman and Nation on 17 October 1931 – read it on our site
• A production of Burmese Days by aya theatre is to open off-Broadway – discover more by and about Orwell and Burma on our Burmese Days page
• Julian Barnes won the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending – he wrote about Orwell for the New York Review of Books in 2009
• It was a controversial year for the Booker, with many literary critics debating the merits of the prize and the shortlist – a good time, then, to read Orwell’s ‘Confessions of a Book Reviewer’
• The T. S. Eliot Prize announced its shortlist – there’s plenty of, and on, Orwell’s poetry on our site (including an extract from Eliot)
• It’s one year since the UK government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, which was the subject of our launch debate last year
• And Norman Bissell will be talking about ‘George Orwell: The Socialist Who Loved Nature’ in Edinburgh on 29 October – Orwell’s ‘Some Thoughts on the Common Toad’ and Coming Up for Air are suitable background reading

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