Page 89 - Nineteen Eighty Four News Today

Dr Aoife Bhreatnach has spent the past year getting inside the prudish and outraged mind of the Irish book censor for her podcast series. Over the past century, thousands of books were banned in what was one of the most draconian censorship regimes in Europe as our moral guardians fought to rid the country of any hint of smut. They ranged from literary novels such as Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, Country Girls by Edna O’Brien and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller to pulp fiction and Madonna�...

Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy talks with Tobias Carroll about his new book, “Political Sign.”

Animal Farm in August 1945, in the closing weeks of the Pacific War. Even then, most naïve supporters of the wartime Soviet-British-American alliance were no longer in denial about the contours of Moscow’s impending postwar communist aggression. (Article by Victor Davis Hanson republished from AMGreatness.com) The short, allegorical novel’s human-like farm animals replay the transition of supposedly 1917 revolutionary Bolsheviks into cynical 1930s Stalinists. Thereby, they remind us that...

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One of France’s first films with sound was 1929’s The Three Masks, about brothers seeking revenge among carnival folk for their impregnated-and-abandoned sister. Sometimes pop culture looks fast-changing and other times it looks as if we’re on season 92 of American Horror Story, the same ugly stories—and impulses—playing out over and over. Humanity has been like this for far longer than a century. With some serious health commentators now lauding the idea of wearing two or even thre...

Eton (Shutterstock) The basic facts about George Orwell’s years at Eton are well known. But we don’t precisely know which Etonian values he retained and what influence the school had on his later life. John le Carré wrote me (on September 27, 1998), “I taught at Eton. It always amused me that Blair-Orwell, who had been to Eton, always took great pains to disown the place.”  Responding to Twentieth Century Authors, Orwell categorically declared: “I was educated at Eton...

Orwell gets a neon-tinged makeover in new Penguin series Australian artist Heath Kane has reimagined the covers of four George Orwell classics in his trademark subversive style 29/01/2021 7:53 am Reimagining one of Penguin’s classic titles would be a dream commission for most designers, let alone being let loose on the work of arguably England’s most celebrated writer, George Orwell. The author and social commentator’s most famous work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, has been reimagined by every...

By Jonathan Fraser-25 January 2021 16:41pm Changing decades, hundreds of years even, of associations around whisky is next to impossible to achieve with cool ads This Burns Night, whisky brands should pause and have a think about why they need to look beyond tired advertising and weave premium experiences into their brand offering, argues Jonathan Fraser, founder and chief strategy officer at creative agency Trouble Maker. Traditional Burns Night celebrations are among the late...

Caution: Reading books may expose you to different points of view Kafka once said that a book must be an ice axe for the frozen sea within us. Here’s a tongue-in-cheek look at how disclaimers could blunt that statement. January 24, 2021 / 02:24 PM IST According to a recent Reuters report, the Hungarian government has ordered a publisher to print disclaimers identifying books that contain “behaviour inconsistent with traditional gender roles”. The specific title that brought this about...

Book review: A biography of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ reveals origins of ‘thought crime’ and much else. History shows 1984 was a pretty ordinary year with few momentous events. However, elections in New Zealand and the US resulted in far-reaching economic change. Ronald Reagan was elected to a second term as president while David Lange led the fourth Labour government. Both inherited economies afflicted by stagflation and adopted neoliberal policies to deal with it. Some equated these wi...