Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Paperback: 'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'

Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. 

Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. 

In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.

George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), is perhaps the most pervasively influential book of the twentieth century.

About the author: George Orwell (1903-1950) was a novelist, essayist and critic best known for his novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). He was a man of strong opinions who addressed some of the major political movements of his times, including imperialism, fascism and communism. Orwell died of tuberculosis in a London hospital on 21 January 1950. Although he was just 46 years old at the time of his death, his ideas and opinions have lived on through his work.

Despite Orwell’s disdain for the BBC during his life, a statue of the writer was commissioned by artist Martin Jennings and installed outside the BBC in London. The eight-foot bronze statue, paid for by the George Orwell Memorial Fund, was unveiled in November 2017. An inscription reads, "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."