Last updated: 25 August 2026
By Tristan ยท Arts, exhibitions and creative culture
This is an opinion piece. Views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute professional advice.
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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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