1984, George Orwell's dying legacy...

Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in London on Wednesday June 8, 1949 and in New York five days later. The world was eager for it. Within 12 months it had sold around 50,000 hardbacks in the UK; in the US sales were more than one-third of a million. It became a phenomenon. 

Sixty years later no one can say how many millions of copies are in print, both in legitimate editions and samizdat versions. It has been adapted for radio, stage, television and cinema, has been studied, copied and parodied and, above all, ransacked for its ideas and images.

As I write, the Daily Mail is reporting that “town halls are routinely using controversial ‘Big Brother’ surveillance laws to spy on their own employees”; the Los Angeles Times is describing a Republican party consultant as “a master of the black art of political newspeak”; The Village Voice is citing “a ripe example of doublethink”; and The Guardian is profiling a community leader “attacked as part of the PC thought police”. More...

See also:

1. George Orwell died today, 59 years ago...
2. America's growing surveillance state...
3. "Big Brother Britain is worse than Russia during Soviet era..."
4. You are a slave to the government...