The early 1980s were not the most cheerful of times. Two heavily armed power blocs were keeping the world in a state of perpetual phoney war. There were authoritarian governments and repressive police forces everywhere.
The western world was looking forward to a date signalling the obliteration of all hope and human values. The countdown to 1984 was more 'millennial' than the real millennium sixteen years later.
The only people who really seemed to be enjoying it were advertising copywriters:
On New Year's Day 1984 we seemed to have entered, not a year, but a ghastly stage set. For forty years George Orwell had been treated as a latter-day Nostradamus. Now, here at last, was the year in which Orwell would be proved right or wrong.
A collective sigh of relief was exhaled as December 31, 1984 slipped away and 1985 began. The date that was, more than any other, symbolic of 'the future' was now past. George Orwell was now revealed in his true colours. He was The Man Who Had Got It Wrong.
(Orwell's working title for the book had been "The Last Man in Europe"; did he foresee what's now playing out in Ukraine and what, at the touch of a button, could turn into something much bigger? Oh, I'm sorry, you had already forgotten about Ukraine, had you? Perhaps you were more interested in your own gender wars or what prophetic words a certain Swedish schoolgirl is uttering about our 'climate crisis', were you?)
Had Orwell really got it so wrong? I invite you to watch the original film version of George Orwell's classic, the only full-length version I could find on YouTube - click here - or to listen to the audiobook - click here: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen ..." Why, you might even be tempted to sit through the whole 325 pages of the book - click here - by which time you may realise that George Orwell could just as easily have named his novel "Twenty Twenty-Three".
George Orwell's terrifying vision of a totalitarian future is more relevant to today's world than almost any other book that I can think of.
