What does 'Orwellian' mean, anyway?
Nick Bentley, Keele University Leading Conservative Brexiteers, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, wrote recently to the UK prime minister, Theresa May, and – surprise, surprise – the text of the letter duly found its way into the hands of the press. It contained a set of demands on how to run Britain’s withdrawal from the EU in language that was described by an unnamed minister as “Orwellian”. For which, read: sinister. But what do we understand by the word – and how has its meaning changed over the years since George Orwell’s death in 1950? Orwell’s career as a writer was long and productive – at one time or another he produced novels, journalism, memoirs, political philosophy, literary criticism and cultural commentary. But the term “Orwellian” most often relates to his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four , completed a couple of years before his death. The novel presents a vision of a Britain taken over by a totalitarian regime in which the state exerts ...