London, as we all know, is the capital of Airstrip One, a province of the superstate Oceania. The dystopian metropolis of Big Brother and Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four was based on the London where George Orwell lived for many years. As an apprentice writer in the late 1920s he walked the streets of the East End disguised as a tramp to accumulate the material for his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London 1933. Later he worked in a Hampstead bookshop the setting for his novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying, occupied a variety of flats in St John's Wood and Islington and in 1949 was brought back from a sanatorium in Gloucestershire to University College Hospital in Bloomsbury, where he died in January 1950.
In this talk, D.J. Taylor, Orwell's biographer, examines the writer's years in the capital, discusses his many London haunts and homes and investigates the decisive effect that London had on the totalitarian nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
D.J. Taylor
D.J. Taylor's Orwell: The Life won the 2003 Whitbread Prize for Biography. His Orwell: The New Life will be published in May 2023. He is also the author of a dozen novels and various other words of non-fiction, including The Prose Factory: Literary Life in England Since 1918 2016 and Lost Girls: Love, War and Literature 1939-1951 2019.
| Ticket | Event time | Cost |
|---|---|---|
|
Orwell's London
Talk with D J Taylor |
18:30 - 20:30 | £12.00 |
Address
The Century Club, 61 - 63, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W1D 6LQ
Nearest Station
Piccadilly Circus (Tube)
1. The ticket holder voluntarily assumes all risks and danger incidental to the event for which the ticket is issued, whether occurring prior, during or after the event. The ticket holder voluntarily agrees that the management, venue, event participants, DesignMyNight WFL Media Ltd and all of their respective agents, officers, directors, owners and employers are expressly released by the ticket holder from any claims arising from such causes.
2. Tickets are issued subject to the rules and regulations of the venue.
3. Please check your tickets, as mistakes cannot always be rectified.
4. Occasionally, events are cancelled or postponed by the promoter, team, performer or venue for a variety of reasons. If the event is cancelled, please contact us for information on receiving a refund from the responsible party. If the event was moved or rescheduled, the venue or promoter may set refund limitations. It is your responsibility to ascertain the date and time of any rearranged event.
5. The venue reserves the right to refuse admission and may on occasion have to conduct security searches to ensure the safety of the patrons.
6. Every effort to admit latecomers will be made at a suitable break in the event, but admission cannot always be guaranteed.
7. We regret that tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded after purchase.
8. Tickets are sold subject to the venue or promoter's right to alter or vary the programme due to events or circumstances beyond its control without being obliged to refund monies or exchange tickets.
9. If this ticket is re-sold or transferred for profit or commercial gain by anyone other than the promoter, venue management, DesignMyNight or one of their authorised sub-agents, it will become voidable and the holder may be
refused entry to or ejected from the venue.
10. The venue may operate a No Smoking Policy.
11. The promoter, venue management and DesignMyNight accept no responsibility for any personal property.
12. The event listed on the purchased ticket is strictly for ticket holders who are over 18 years of age. Identification may be required.