Nineteen Eighty-Four (Summer Repeat)

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2024

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's (1903-1950) final novel, published in 1949, set in a dystopian London which is now found in Airstrip One, part of the totalitarian superstate of Oceania which is always at war and where the protagonist, Winston Smith, works at the Ministry of Truth as a rewriter of history: 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' The influence of Orwell's novel is immeasurable, highlighting threats to personal freedom with concepts he named such as doublespeak, thoughtcrime, Room 101, Big Brother, memory hole and thought police.

With

David Dwan Professor of English Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Oxford

Lisa Mullen Teaching Associate in Modern Contemporary Literature at the University of Cambridge

And

John Bowen Professor of English Literature at the University of York

Producer: Simon Tillotson

In Our Time is a BBC Sounds Audio Production

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rory Stewart and I want to talk about ignorance. I will die without having read
0:08.2	everything that was written in classical Latin. Because ignorance isn't simply the opposite of knowledge.
0:14.7	It's part of what it means to be human.
0:17.5	Just about every game I can think of involves ignorance.
0:22.1	There's no adventure without ignorance. There's no there's no narrative.
0:25.0	The long history of ignorance from Confucius to Kianan
0:29.0	with me Rory Stewart,
0:31.0	listen on BBC Sounds.
0:35.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:38.0	In our times on its annual break and we'll be back on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds on the 19th of September.
0:44.8	Until then, each week we're offering an episode chosen from our archive of more
0:49.0	than a thousand programs which I hope you'll enjoy.
0:51.7	Have a good summer.
0:53.0	Hello, Double Think, Thought Police, Room 101, Big Brother is watching you.
0:58.0	Just some of the ideas George Orwell coined in his last novel 1984 and which we use still today.
1:06.3	It's a prophecy and a warning about totalitarianism, what it looks like and through the character
1:11.3	of Winston Smith what it feels like when there's no
1:14.4	freedom to act or think and where the leader chooses what her facts, what is true.
1:19.2	Love here is impossible. In his place is a daily ritual the two minutes of hate and
1:25.0	ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness. With me to discuss 1984 I David Duane,
1:30.0	professor of English literature and intellectual History at the University of Oxford.
1:34.0	Lisa Mullen, Teaching Associate in Modern Contemporary Literature,
	...

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