Last updated: 25 August 2026
By Tristan · Arts, exhibitions and creative culture
This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.
This article contains affiliate links. If you click through and buy, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It does not affect my editorial view.
This month I went back to a book I was made to read at sixteen and had been quietly avoiding ever since. My Nineteen Eighty-Four review, then, is really a re-reading. Orwell's last novel turns out to be a stranger, funnier and more irritating thing than the version I remembered, and the parts that have dated are not the parts everyone assumes.
It also happens to be having a moment. A new stage adaptation opens in Glasgow next week, there is a full-cast Audible production with a genuinely starry list of names, and the paperback now costs less than a pint. Here is what I made of it, and which edition I would actually put your money on.
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