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this is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder

1:01

and editor of The New Books Network.

1:03

I've published several academic books and one

1:05

of the things I found frustrating is

1:07

my inability to get them picked up

1:09

in the press. There really is no

1:11

PR service specifically oriented toward academic books.

1:14

Recently, however, I had the

1:16

opportunity to work with a PR firm in

1:19

New York, RLM, on a book that I

1:21

recently published. And I have to say, they

1:23

did a remarkable job at a very low

1:25

price. And this got me thinking. I wonder

1:28

if The New Books Network and RLM

1:30

could provide a service that would promote

1:32

academic books. So, the folks at RLM

1:34

and I put our heads together and

1:36

we came up with a package. It

1:38

is specifically targeted toward people like you,

1:41

people who write academic books. So, if

1:43

you're interested, you should go to the

1:45

NBN website and click publicize your book.

1:47

And you'll find some information about the

1:49

services that the NBN and RLM are

1:52

offering. What we really want to do

1:54

is provide you with value for money.

1:56

As far as we know, no such

1:58

service exists. This is the first. of

2:00

its kind and we really hope that it's

2:02

successful and we hope that it helps you

2:05

get the word out about your academic book.

2:08

Welcome to the New Books Network. Good

2:12

day. Welcome to New Books in History,

2:15

a podcast channel of New Books Network. My name

2:17

is Dr. Charles Catillo, the Roy of the Historical

2:19

Society. I'm a host on the channel and

2:21

today we are pleased and indeed honored

2:23

to have with us Man

2:26

of Letters, literary critic, novelist,

2:28

DJ Taylor. And today

2:30

we are discussing his newest book, Who is

2:32

Big Brother? I read his guide to George

2:34

Orwell, published by Yale University Press. Welcome

2:37

David Taylor. Welcome, thank you very

2:39

much Charles, it's very good to be with you again. David

2:43

Taylor, why did you write this book? I

2:45

read this book. People

2:48

may wonder, your listeners may wonder, why

2:50

there is a pressing need for yet

2:52

another book about George Orwell. But I

2:54

discovered that when I finished Orwell

2:56

the New Life, which came out last year and

2:59

which you were also kind enough

3:01

to interview me about, there was

3:03

still a lot of material left

3:06

over and there were areas of

3:08

Orwell's life which were fascinating to

3:10

me but don't necessarily fit in

3:12

conventional biographical narratives. And

3:14

so, Who is Big Brother? Although

3:16

it's described as a reader's guide, the

3:18

media is actually a book of Orwell

3:20

puzzles, peculiarities of his life

3:23

and works that I've kind of explored in

3:25

the hope that they will tell both

3:27

me and the reader more about the

3:29

way in which he thought and wrote. Why

3:33

do you think that Orwell, Potter's demise,

3:35

became an instant part of the literary

3:37

canon? I

3:39

think this, it's

3:41

a very curious concatenation of

3:44

circumstance I think that

3:46

propelled back to 1984

3:49

so immediately into actually

3:51

saying the literary canon.

3:54

Not only was it written to

3:56

a time almost instantly with the

3:58

kind of, the state of the

4:00

world, you know this was a post-war Europe

4:02

and America that had entered the

4:04

Cold War, it was very fearful of what was

4:06

going on on the other side of the Iron

4:09

Curtain to use Churchill's phrase. In fact if all

4:11

of them invented the, Churchill invented the phrase for

4:13

the Iron Curtain and all of them invented the

4:15

phrase the Cold War. So 1984 published

4:19

in 1949 was absolutely on the cusp of

4:21

all this. And then there's

4:23

what can only really be called the

4:25

kind of mythical romantic element of it

4:27

which is that Orwell desperately ill when

4:30

he finished 1984 and was published

4:32

in the June of 1949, so maybe almost 75 years ago,

4:36

then died six months later. And

4:38

as soon as he died, as his

4:41

friend Mark Muggarage put it, a

4:43

media legend swung into view of

4:46

Orwell and so everything about him

4:48

either crystallised in those days

4:50

after his death. So you get this enormous,

4:52

best-selling book which is you know, absolutely

4:55

timed to the tenor of its times, written

4:57

by someone who's just died, but lived to

4:59

see his success. I mean Orwell

5:01

famously, when he was sitting in the hospital

5:03

there just before he died, told his friends

5:05

that the money coming in from the book

5:07

was fairy gold, he could never live to

5:09

see it. And these things kind of came

5:12

together to produce an extraordinary kind of literary

5:14

sensation towards the end of 1949, the beginning

5:16

of 1950.

5:18

How would you describe Orwell's view of the past?

5:22

Orwell's view of the past was

5:24

the kind of view of the past

5:26

that people of his generation up and

5:28

upbringing would usually have

5:31

in that it was in

5:34

some ways intensely romanticised. I think Orwell had

5:36

a romantic view of the past, although he

5:38

was also capable of seeing some of its

5:40

realities. And there's for

5:43

example for all his left-wing convictions

5:45

at his progressive point of view,

5:47

when he was acting as private

5:49

tutor to two small boys in

5:51

Suffolk in the early 1930s, he

5:53

was Supposed to have

5:56

told them that had he lived in the

5:58

mid-17th century and been compelled. The

6:00

English Civil War that he would have

6:02

been a cavalier supported King Charles on

6:04

the grounds of the Van Het. The

6:06

puritans with such dreary people are combined

6:08

that also the is I think to

6:10

an understanding of some of the reality

6:12

is a what lies must have been

6:14

like for ordinary people centuries before one

6:17

of the as the new letters I

6:19

discovered it is written the early nineteen

6:21

thirties or to a friend and stuff

6:23

like to sought describes going out to

6:25

the British Museum or and seeing a

6:27

pot com which you could see the

6:29

inscription felix. Packets. In other words Felix made

6:31

this and last in and and well uses

6:33

about this is as the of Felix told

6:36

fellow must have been a slave and and

6:38

yet you know here he is eighteen hundred

6:40

years later or well as see his name

6:42

on the i'm on the side of a

6:44

pop. Mechanics ought to conjure up something some

6:46

vestige of the night he must have less

6:48

are like. So I think I would describe

6:50

his view of the past as a romanticized

6:52

and yet ah conscious of of what that

6:54

lot must have been my fault with people.

6:58

Why did oil deals? Catholicism go from

7:00

open minded as the really dicey thirty

7:02

still was entirely negative view of the

7:04

same in the post World War Two

7:06

period. That's

7:08

very interesting question or well as you

7:10

as you perhaps no of have so

7:13

many list is no. Had a very

7:15

brief early career as a religious controversy

7:17

as to and wrote some quite interesting

7:19

reviews of books about Catholicism for small

7:22

magazine for the only nineteen thirties and

7:24

indeed religious topics generally. I thought one

7:26

of his son fixation source the end

7:28

of his life although he he didn't

7:31

believe in God for that, he wants

7:33

to be buried according to the white

7:35

Church of England, but he's extremely. Interested

7:37

or what? the michael secular morality

7:39

I can take up the teachings

7:41

of the bible and and divest

7:44

month that a bad that their

7:46

their spiritual aspect of then visas

7:48

you know a way to live

7:50

and construct a secular morality but

7:52

you're quite what the ai it

7:54

towards Saudi protect. Fell. Asleep early

7:56

on that vacant when development this

7:59

little think he began the liquid

8:01

all us as up with scratched

8:03

sentiments Reader: it's worthless. Logic walls

8:06

inside. almost forgot to tell a

8:08

tear in his letter. With a

8:11

toxic spiritual aspect and some it's

8:13

interesting because again one of the

8:15

letters that I turned.written in the

8:18

early ninety thirties describes. The.

8:20

Reaction of the Jesuit priest to one

8:22

a ball wells pieces of relatively polemical

8:24

were like rice and religious topics. And

8:26

of the priest you are who they

8:29

have. a mutual friend, a lady who

8:31

lived in Southwold were always stayed with

8:33

his parents. in the meeting was set

8:35

up on The Less and which Will

8:37

Will describes it recounts his being rendered

8:39

almost prostrate. You stated help learned helplessness

8:42

by the remorseless less. A saw the

8:44

Martindale as his name was no object

8:46

and there's an echo of this curiously

8:48

enough in one of the interrogation. Scene

8:50

or in Nineteen Eighty Four were Winston

8:53

is being there. Is he a big

8:55

subjected city? Logic of his principal told

8:57

Ansa abroad and added it is A

8:59

due to his L or abroad is

9:02

described as resembling a priest. Ah there's

9:04

something in in the language used to

9:06

Skype the are called the States There

9:08

is something very redolent of laps or

9:11

they are good. The of the let

9:13

a little well wrote something like sixty

9:15

seventy years before you wonder. I wonder

9:17

whether that incident about that like kind.

9:20

Of. But athletes subjected to the most and

9:22

rise or fall them off. There's more to

9:24

may ultimately have had some to do Not

9:26

have Eighty Four. Do.

9:28

You have any idea as to what Oros view

9:31

of Burma was when he was stationed there. Absolutely

9:34

none whatsoever. I say this because

9:36

seven through just written an article

9:38

burma side which is ah ah

9:41

the four hundred page ah projects

9:43

and I spoke be the opposite

9:45

was who have time in Burma

9:47

that the the problem about well

9:49

funded drama about which very little

9:51

is known is that all his

9:53

judgements of the place an old

9:55

his writing about it is retrospective

9:58

said as the novel Bomb. Days

10:00

published Inaki, Thirty four or there's

10:02

a couple of essays are hanging

10:04

out, shooting at Elephant and as

10:06

a few poems which helps solve

10:08

which are magical probably written. It's

10:10

not their little the boat back

10:12

home from Burma, but the thing

10:14

about. Oh well when he

10:16

was actually a server the the Rauch

10:18

between nineteen twenty two a lot and

10:21

twenty seven days that he was so

10:23

sort of decided that are ugly innocuous

10:25

that the few people who came across

10:28

it in Burma never thought that he

10:30

was anything out of the old make

10:32

the was just possibly sort faithful beautiful

10:35

imperial servant and so I'm although it's

10:37

perfectly possible to conceive of him to

10:39

envisage him as the simplicity young man

10:42

and decided that some British rule of

10:44

these was a sham. And and and

10:46

and was very keen to throw off

10:49

Imperial Shackleton stop declaring himself as an

10:51

anti Imperialists. There was absolutely no evidence

10:53

of this what he was in Burma

10:55

himself and it's often all but his

10:58

coming home from Burma in not twenty

11:00

seven was a kind of gesture here.

11:02

political gesture of of want to throw

11:05

off. The. Yoke and Imperialists. But

11:07

in fact, he came home one a

11:09

medical certificate and he didn't decide that

11:11

he wasn't coming back until sometime after

11:14

that. So I'm costing him staying in

11:16

his early twenty's a radical anti imperialists.

11:18

Nothing is his eyes Jackson stretch, it

11:20

lacks. What? What do

11:23

you me when you say that Oil

11:25

Quote took a lively interest in underachievement?

11:27

Unquote. Well, he

11:29

certainly took a lively interest in his

11:32

own purported underachievement. I'm in, it may

11:34

sound this may sound very strange, but

11:36

throughout about his adult life and I

11:38

think even before it well believe that

11:41

it failed. That are the things he

11:43

tried to succeed A D haven't succeeded

11:45

An. Older. Citing get it He

11:47

wants wrote that saw on Balance Life

11:50

is it as a succession of failures

11:52

of be the very young or the

11:54

very foolish. Believe otherwise and there's that

11:56

extraordinary. An essay that he wrote about

11:58

his days. The As he

12:00

had school subset rims on the Sussex

12:03

coast which aims with his thirteen year

12:05

old boy you just won a scholarship

12:07

to eaten yet as the leading English

12:09

private school. And L

12:11

was adult settled. Backs on it. looks

12:13

back on their some says that the

12:15

small boy standing all the railway station

12:17

was consumed by sense of failure failure

12:20

behind him stadium before him that was

12:22

all his life. Whatever the answer and

12:24

you think your wit, where did he

12:26

get this from? Why I would he

12:28

have imagined that the age of thirteen.

12:30

That he would come back he succeeded.

12:32

He was probably one of those brilliant

12:34

classical style is a D day to

12:36

not in the whole country at not

12:38

western Europe and yet he said for

12:40

the thought that he failed or but

12:42

i think this is sense of fatalism

12:44

determinism times over his light on as

12:46

as you know he was very of

12:48

well for most of his adult life

12:50

though he went to Burma with defected

12:52

lungs which the boy stomach climate can

12:55

only have worsened and out from his

12:57

early from his mid twenties never. Very.

12:59

Well and went. went. Finally was made clear

13:01

to him in ninety four time that he

13:03

was seriously ill and might not survive. He

13:06

read to a friend of his i've had

13:08

it coming all my life to that that

13:10

tremendous sense that everything seat what taught destiny

13:12

that state is gone and by the collar

13:14

he might isn't Very young man a little

13:16

shaken. See him off. What?

13:19

What Does oil? His essay, confessions of

13:21

a Book Reviewer tell us about Orwell's

13:23

view of the litter. a marketplace of

13:25

his time. It's

13:28

an exaggerated view fans at all. although

13:30

despite it's kind of incidental hours on

13:32

the with a terrible professional lies that

13:35

the repeal has it is also I

13:37

think slot you romanticize and goes back

13:39

to Orwell's ideas and a his views

13:42

of bad Victorian literature at yeah he's

13:44

great Sign of that. I wouldn't make

13:46

these Thackeray and for getting both who

13:49

work there is taught in the last

13:51

be described as as the Tray Sacks

13:53

am I mean I think it's it

13:56

is an exaggeration. Nobody Attic. No big

13:58

deal with a straight. A. Dev. Had

14:00

to sit down and and and review

14:02

the L. A salt and parcel of

14:04

books that All Wells reviewer a confession

14:06

to a book of your have to

14:08

do but the Eat Less was being

14:10

wildly exaggerated. There is a kernel of

14:12

truth. There is something in. It's

14:15

relations Orwell's out with the tree life in

14:17

the Nineteen thirties. An indie to anybody who's

14:19

ever picked up pandas in the trees freelance.

14:22

I was thirsty. They live. When I began

14:24

to work as a elo in the in

14:26

the World books in London or in the

14:28

Nineteen eighties, I I could see either There

14:31

was just a tiny swayed. Have.

14:33

To use that job at work related illicit.

14:36

Between what or what had written one I

14:38

myself was experiencing and he had to pass

14:40

into books arriving. you're thinking how do I

14:42

do this handler I paint hundred kicking would

14:45

work at least four or five books and

14:47

I'm I'm so I always is One my

14:49

favorite flavor all essays because I read I

14:52

realized that be done. It does have something

14:54

to say even now about Living of the

14:56

Free Dogs literary night. When.

14:59

Did oil is become seriously interested

15:01

in politics and socialism? Ah

15:05

visited. This is very fascinating quite

15:07

question which which is endlessly to

15:09

plate and as I said before

15:11

it. Is. Often assumed that he

15:14

came back from Burma with yes, political

15:16

ideas fully formed. Or they write Parsley

15:18

formed. And yet I discovered a letter

15:20

written in Nineteen Thirty One. It's when

15:22

oil was living in London at a

15:24

time, a great national crisis In the

15:26

case we were going off the gold

15:28

standard, a national government was being voted

15:30

in. I'm there with you. They would

15:32

probably get to be lots of well

15:34

says this latter. And yet he also

15:36

says to his friend that he he

15:38

takes no interest in politics and open

15:40

don't know anything about it. I think

15:42

this is. an exaggeration but i think

15:44

it's also true to say that whatever

15:46

political use he bought it in for

15:48

me in the nineteen thirties were customize

15:50

buys experience of going to spain or

15:53

to fight in spanish civil war the

15:55

end of naughty thirty six and it

15:57

was arriving in the revolutionary barcelona that

15:59

dramatic really galvanized him because he thought that

16:01

for the first time in his life he

16:03

had chanced a policy society that really was

16:06

working by genuine

16:09

levels of equality and

16:11

fraternity and made a

16:13

great impression on him. But of course

16:15

it was very short-lived and if Spain

16:17

also kind of alerted himself to human

16:20

possibility then it also greatly disturbed him

16:22

because it was in Spain that he

16:24

first saw Soviet

16:26

orchestrated totalitarianism, you

16:28

know, manipulating people's

16:31

minds. It was in Spain that he first

16:33

saw really what proper uses to which propaganda

16:35

could be put in which he

16:37

says that he would read newspaper articles about

16:39

troops being condemned for cowardice who he knew

16:41

had fought bravely. And I think

16:43

it was in Spain that he came home

16:45

from Spain with an idea of what

16:47

it was that totalitarian ideologies could do

16:50

on a grand scale and the

16:52

danger that that posed to

16:54

the democracies of the West. Do

16:57

we know why exactly he decided to go to Spain

16:59

in the first place given the fact that he was

17:01

just married? I

17:03

think it was a romantic gesture. There

17:06

are reports of his going

17:09

round to save farewell to people in London in

17:11

December 1936 and actually

17:13

saying sort of, you know, roughly saying things

17:15

like, you know, splendid chaps of the Spanish,

17:18

you know, everybody got to go and help

17:20

them. His original idea

17:22

was that he would write newspaper articles but

17:25

as soon as he arrived in Barcelona I think he

17:27

decided to pick up a rifle and fight which is

17:29

what he did. Even at,

17:31

you know, a considerable personal castle, I mean he

17:33

was very nearly shot dead by a sniper, a

17:35

flashing sniper and the bullet, mister's car at it

17:37

after it by a few millimetres. But

17:40

then towards the

17:43

editor he'd fought for a topsy,

17:45

a splinter group with the OUM

17:47

which attracted the wrath of the

17:49

Soviet connoisseurs and he then narrowly

17:51

escaped from Spain with his life. So

17:54

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20:00

did orally here to

20:02

the strictures that he.

20:06

made clear in the writings of

20:08

good prose. Sorry,

20:10

could you repeat that? Did oral it here

20:13

to the rules that he said out in

20:15

terms of what to consist of riding of

20:17

good prose. Well

20:19

he famously said that's a good

20:21

Prose is like your wind K

20:23

Ah Meaning of the did has

20:26

a transparency Anna Anna Anna. ease

20:28

of access and. Bar.

20:30

Lot or he certainly a he certainly

20:32

a deer to these home to his

20:35

own group said that the the clarity

20:37

of the it's whitey ah ease with

20:39

very very few exceptions. extraordinary and he

20:41

that's an interesting essay that he wrote

20:44

about American novelist had read Villa by

20:46

sorry interested in the lacing thirties the

20:48

said the what he first read Miller

20:50

it was your He kept this sensation

20:52

that he was written for me and

20:55

some the alone and I must confess

20:57

when I first read the very first

20:59

will Not Live A Red which I

21:01

think was Closures Doctor actually the second

21:03

mobile not ah the two books that

21:06

made him or his reputation Our Farm

21:08

and Nineteen Eighty Four and I had

21:10

exactly the same sensation that was our

21:12

although ah my own Lot world and

21:14

life was far removed from back. Dorothy

21:17

Hair is grub down not her ninety

21:19

thirties heroin. That the book kind of

21:21

spoke to me it was like am.

21:24

A bullet. when you back across time

21:26

you like a way of writing and

21:28

an immediacy of a never previously encountered.

21:30

So so I would say yes. Of

21:32

what I would also say is that.

21:34

a group or just like the window tight

21:37

is not one of all was best at

21:39

the crabs because there's quite a loss of

21:41

programs and some of it proves that my

21:44

bio weapon south let is not like a

21:46

window type of takes time to reveal it's

21:48

import and urban an inside the transpires food

21:50

in some ways it's one of the this

21:53

is one of the motivations to writing this

21:55

dog because although all well aimed at a

21:57

kind of transparency both and it is right

22:00

and his life. The

22:02

simple things that you see are sometimes very

22:05

complicated and tracking them back to source is

22:07

fascinating and in the end I have told

22:09

you more about Orwell and his

22:11

life and work than is perhaps an instance

22:13

immediately revealed on the page. What

22:15

was Cyril Connolly correct when he said that

22:17

Orwell was quote, a revolutionary in love with

22:20

1910 unquote? That's

22:23

a very interesting quote and I

22:25

would return to your quote from Orwell's other

22:28

great friend, the contemporary,

22:30

the novelist Anthony Pohl said that Orwell

22:32

was a conservative in everything except politics.

22:35

Now some people would argue that that's impossible

22:37

that your political views affect every aspect of

22:39

your life but it has to be said

22:41

that Orwell was very much a

22:43

product of his time and although

22:46

he kept the faith politically with the

22:48

left, most of his social attitudes were

22:50

very, very conservative. I mean he

22:52

had a great dislike of homosexuals for

22:55

example and indeed any kind of sort

22:57

of ostentation and flamboyancy

23:00

and his

23:03

routines, the

23:06

routines of his ordinary life, the way he

23:08

went about having traditional

23:10

sort of Edwardian teas when Anthony is

23:12

on toast and sort of steaming teacups

23:15

and so it was a very old

23:17

fashioned kind of life that he led.

23:19

He dressed in a very old fashioned

23:21

way. He looked immensely old fashioned. In

23:24

the late 1940s he looked like

23:26

this sort of in some ways

23:28

this elderly Edwardian gentleman although he's

23:30

only in his forties and again

23:34

the fact that he'd been to Eton, one of the

23:36

major British public schools

23:38

hung over him and he

23:40

was very much an oldetonian and he met

23:42

another oldetonian and they immediately would

23:45

sort of strike it off and be lost in

23:47

their own little rather exclusive world. So I

23:50

think yes there is an intense conservatism kind of

23:52

in many aspects of what was. Did

23:55

he wear on a daily basis

23:57

an Etonian tie? Well

24:00

he didn't but he could certainly recognize one and

24:02

he was certainly recognized by old Atonians and even

24:04

when he was in Morocco in

24:06

1938-9 recuperating for your first serious illness

24:13

and writing what became his fourth novel

24:15

coming up there he was still taking

24:17

a great interest in the Eden Harrow

24:19

cricket match which the angle of sporting

24:22

picture that takes place at Lord's

24:24

Cricket Ground and in fact one of the

24:26

very last book reviews he ever wrote was

24:28

by an Aton master about life and skill

24:30

which he was actually rather charitable towards it

24:33

and said that it gave boys

24:35

a chance to express their individuality and find out

24:37

the kind of people they wanted to be. How

24:41

does Orwell mean for the reader to view

24:43

the character Julia in the novel 1984? Sorry

24:48

could you say that again? Sorry I lost in

24:50

transmission. How does Orwell mean

24:52

for the reader to view the character

24:54

Julia in his novel 1984? This

24:58

is a fascinating question and in fact the

25:01

American novel of Sandra Newman has recently written

25:03

a very good novel called Julia which

25:06

reinvents the novel from Julia's point of

25:08

view. My own view of

25:11

Julia in 1984 is that Orwell doesn't

25:13

do perhaps purposely, doesn't do as much

25:15

with her as he could and in

25:17

some ways she's a bit of an

25:19

absence. She sometimes don't

25:21

seem to know what's going on in her mind,

25:23

what her motivation is and she's

25:26

not to me a particularly good revolutionary.

25:28

I mean the famous moment when they

25:30

get hold of the man who indulged

25:33

in this underground book

25:35

the oligarchical principles of collectivism and

25:37

as soon as Winston starts reading

25:39

it she falls asleep. My

25:43

own view I suppose is that Julia

25:45

is a honey trap. She's

25:47

there, everything she does is deliberate.

25:50

She's singly Winston out of the

25:52

pack so that Orion can get

25:55

into his clutches and re-educate it.

25:57

And interestingly, there is a cancelled

25:59

passage. The original manuscript company doesn't

26:01

appear. The final version where where Winston

26:03

meet studio by chance at is coming

26:06

away from Sega abroad and in the

26:08

mascot is is that he gets the

26:10

impression that that this was the last

26:12

time they would ever see each other

26:14

and. Been. Otherwise the whole thing

26:17

is a put up job and he's been

26:19

a year he's been tempted away and an

26:21

oil diminutive back from the final version with

26:23

my think that he thought he katie much

26:26

way ah and and of soldered even weise

26:28

and very very entertaining were some of on

26:30

this particular thought. I recommend a book. Though

26:34

I'm is the character big Brother

26:36

not in a novel. Nights A

26:38

for based on are modeled on.

26:41

Well this is the question which gives the book

26:43

it's title or to which you lose their a

26:45

number of. Answers. To that

26:48

to that one which I would sort

26:50

of by would sometimes been fought as

26:52

a big brother doesn't actually exist he

26:54

doesn't have to exist he simply a

26:56

symbol on which in the us had

26:58

the people who support the as the

27:01

I need received can be focused on

27:03

and on it he he appears on

27:05

screen and bitumen potato late and harangues

27:07

is people but that doesn't mean to

27:09

be the real person except we've been

27:11

invented by the regime or the obvious

27:13

answers that he stalin because started being

27:16

the great an ideological. Flicker of the

27:18

late Nineteen Forties, the great totalitarian

27:20

Dictator, and an increasingly enough this

27:22

this aspect topic was was rammed

27:25

home by the take out with

27:27

the book in the States and

27:29

the routine states at what as

27:31

you know the ah the The

27:34

Book was very much recognized by

27:36

the Cia Cia you expanded the

27:38

first film version and very instructive

27:40

to look at the jacket and

27:43

the first American paperback edition not

27:45

Eighty Four which is. Published by

27:47

Signal Books in mid nineties, Fifty am it.

27:49

It's funny for lots of reasons. One is

27:52

the reason with it's or but he got

27:54

up the covers. Gonna like a top all

27:56

that you bought a dime store and that

27:58

Winston Smith looks like. Culture and today

28:00

look slightly support the Bronx without you know

28:03

cleavage Out to their and an hour and

28:05

a Come Hither express not have faced with

28:07

that. The fascinating thing is the poster of

28:10

Big Brother lives on the wall behind but

28:12

because not only does he look like starlet

28:14

the the illustrates was giving the pair of

28:16

ears as well like someone out from the

28:19

gonna be a Lot of the Rings Justice

28:21

sort of emphasized the best the old nature

28:23

of it'll so that's an one other thing

28:26

I would say Something I've always thought is

28:28

that Big Brother's is also are. Usually

28:30

very precise about describing people's faces and

28:32

box but the descriptions of Big Brother

28:34

about arctic courtesy played adds up see

28:37

different way to describe this one. Occasional

28:39

which well describes his face is to

28:41

Banks Full of Power and the stairs

28:43

com and there's a sign photographable will

28:45

take the naughty Forty six one of

28:48

the last photographs of never Taken which

28:50

we put on the jacket of who

28:52

is Big Brother because he standing there

28:54

stay sitting there staring six they have

28:56

that the viewer heater any in his

28:59

mid forties early. Forties the looks about

29:01

sixty, possibly even older. such as the

29:03

state this health and it's always struck

29:05

me that that space is quote full

29:07

of power and mysterious mom which just

29:09

happens to be almost infinite big brother.

29:13

David tell if you wanted people take one thing away

29:16

from your book what would it be? Ah

29:19

the thing I want people to take. I

29:21

would well actually I have say two things

29:23

I'm sorry Charles but one thing I want

29:25

people to take away just what an extraordinary

29:27

brilliant writer or well it's You cannot go

29:30

wrong with him at even the most trivial

29:32

out would be trivial piece of his journalism

29:34

is full of fascination and to have an

29:36

interest and and and relevance. The other thing

29:38

is I think what I said before that

29:41

in the majority of cases that what you

29:43

think are simple things that you see in

29:45

well I can actually be extraordinary com as

29:47

complicated as. a journey that takes us

29:49

back to the waved his mind what

29:51

and how it sometimes correlate with instance

29:53

in his life is is abdo classmate

29:56

athletic ultimately tells us or even more

29:58

about his his life and what what

30:00

I have to say already a very well-tilled

30:02

field. On that

30:04

observation, I would like to thank you very

30:06

much, David Taylor, for being so kind to

30:08

speak with us today. This is Charles Cottillo.

30:10

You've been listening to New Books of History,

30:12

a podcast channel, New Books Network. Thank

30:15

you, David Taylor, very much. Thank

30:17

you very much, Charles.