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Orwell's shadow Big Brother, Room 101, 1984. George Orwell is everywhere. There is no escape. By DJ Taylor

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From: The Independent - London
Date: 20020512
Author:DJ Taylor

good test of a writer's influence is to work out his or her impact on the millions of people who have never opened one of their books. In his essay on Charles Dickens, written in the weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War, Orwell suggested that until well into the inter- war era it would have been possible for a music hall comedian to go on stage and inhabit one of the better known Dickensian characters with a fair chance of being understood by his audience. By this stage in his trajectory, you see, Dickens had become public property: the variety hall crowd would have known, ...

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