The Thought Police, doublethink, Newspeak, Big Brother - '1984' itself: these terms and concepts are central to our thinking about freedom and its suppression. Yet they were newly created by George Orwell in 1949 as he conjured his dystopian vision of a totalitarian world. The principal characters are ordinary human beings like ourselves: Winston Smith and Julia, whose love is also an act of rebellion against the Party. Opposing them are the massed powers of the state. No-one is free from surveillance; the 'truth' is constantly altered; and Big Brother controls all. Even the simple act of keeping a diary is punishable by death. In Winston's battle to keep his freedom of thought, his powerful adversary O'Brien uses fear and pain to enter his very thought processes. Does 2+2=4? Or is it 5? We find out in Room 101. Nineteen Eighty-Four was Orwell's last novel; but the world he created is always with us, as we find within it a mirror for our own times and a warning for the future.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 385

Dimensions: 125 x 198 x 20 mm

Publication Date: 01-08-2021

To George Orwell, Joseph Stalin was always a "disgusting murderer". But, when the Soviet Union became Britain's ally against Nazi Germany, this became an uncomfortable truth that few wanted to hear. Orwell felt an urgent need to forcefully remind people of Stalin's brutality. An essay would never reach a wide audience: a novel would take too long to write. He hit on the inspired idea of combining the moralism of the 'beast fable' with the satire of Gulliver's Travels. A group of farmyard animals overthrow their human masters. Their revolution is inspired by ideals of liberty and equality, but when Napoleon the pig takes command, he creates a new tyranny worse than the old. Published in 1945, this little book became a seminal text in the emerging 'cold war' (a phrase Orwell coined). Today, Animal Farm remains a powerful fable about the nature of tyranny which applies for all ages.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 216

Dimensions: 127 x 197 x 15 mm

Publication Date: 01-01-1945