1984: The masterpiece that killed George Orwell
posted by Artw on May 9, 2009 - 79 comments

How the Poor Die My right-hand neighbour was a little red-haired cobbler with one leg shorter than the other, who used to announce the death of any other patient (this happened a number of times, and my neighbour was always the first to hear of it) by whistling to me, exclaiming "NUMÉRO 43!" (or whatever it was) and flinging his arms above his head. This man had not much wrong with him, but in most of the other beds within my angle of vision some squalid tragedy or some plain horror was being enacted. Previously [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu on Dec 4, 2008 - 16 comments

GYOB: George Orwell's Blog, brought to you by The Orwell Prize. "August 9, 1938: Caught a large snake in the herbaceous border beside the drive..." [more inside]
posted by Alvy Ampersand on Aug 9, 2008 - 13 comments

Nineteen Eighty-Four (YouTube) Nigel Kneale's BBC adaptation of the Orwell classic; made in 1954, with Peter Cushing as Winston Smith.
posted by Abiezer on May 6, 2007 - 18 comments

George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house. With CCTV. Perhaps the Surveillance Camera Players could put on a performance there. It looks like Britain really is becoming a surveillance society. [Via Digg.]
posted by homunculus on Apr 2, 2007 - 44 comments

George Orwell né Eric Arthur Blair is probably best known to readers for his eerily prescient novels 1984 and Animal Farm. This comprehensive Orwell site betrays an erudite, complex, fascinating personality who wrote about a variety of subjects, from an exposition on British class relations affecting the art and practice of murder, to the complex moral compromises of Gandhi's practice of non-violent resistance, to the doublespeak-laden corruption of the English language as a telling reflection of a corrupt, brutal, post-WWII culture — and much, much more. This site also includes Russian translations of much of Orwell's work.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 21, 2006 - 21 comments

"I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately." – George Orwell, writing about the revolutionary war which started 70 years ago yesterday: July 19th, 1936. Also: Anarchism and the Spanish Civil War. The Visual Front: Posters of The Spanish Civil War. Photos from the Spanish Civil War. Films from the CNT (National Confederation of Labour), 1936-1938.
posted by Len on Jul 20, 2006 - 28 comments

Who is watching Big Brother? Last week, the Australian Privacy Foundation held its annual Big Brother Awards, with biometric passports winning the prestigious "Orwell" for the most invasive technology (other countries' Big Brother Awards here). Not long before, Privacy International and the Electronic Privacy Information Center released their 7th Annual Survey on the state of privacy in sixty countries, claiming that threats to personal privacy have reached a level that is dangerous to fundamental human rights. Are we edging closer to Room 101?
posted by UbuRoivas on Nov 29, 2004 - 6 comments

Today marks one hundred years since the birth of George Orwell. He may have died in 1950, just after finishing his master work, but he has remained culturally relevant ever since, and never more so than during the past two years.
posted by Silune on Jun 25, 2003 - 6 comments

"Orwellian, Dude!" Elusive, legendary author Thomas Pynchon resurfaces to intoduce a new edition of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four with a critical eye on the present. And finds optimism in the appendix.
posted by Bletch on May 3, 2003 - 17 comments

Many know about the WWII propaganda films made by Warner Bros & Disney. But few know of the CIAs efforts to produce Cold War propaganda films. Like this take on George Orwells, Animal Farm.
posted by Dreamghost on Apr 17, 2003 - 5 comments

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Words are to be likely casualties of the next few hours/days/weeks/months - time to double-check George Orwell's informative field medicine manual for the English Language...
posted by klaatu on Mar 20, 2003 - 6 comments

"Granted, we're a long way from resembling the kind of authoritarian state Orwell depicted, but some of the similarities are starting to get a bit eerie."
posted by jjg on Jul 28, 2002 - 54 comments

One Hundred and One Things I would put into Room 101 -- Stu from Feeling Listless has compiled a list of all the things he would put into Room 101 (which contained 'the worst thing in the world' according to George Orwell). So what would you put in your own personal Room 101?
posted by LMG on Apr 19, 2002 - 27 comments

Today's Orwells? Ron Rosenbaum writes interestingly in the NY Observer about how Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan, expatriate Brits both, have become the "most forceful, eloquent and influential voices in the American debate over the Sept. 11 attacks and their meaning."
posted by bmckenzie on Jan 11, 2002 - 11 comments

"Let's call this a hyperwar: a world where the ordinary, natural context of societies is no longer peace, but war." Having seen the photograph of Osama bin Laden on the front page of Salon yesterday, I couldn't help thinking of the Two Minutes' Hate from 1984 (Full text here.) With this essay from Libération, does another piece of the Orwellian jigsaw fit into place?
posted by holgate on Sep 15, 2001 - 22 comments