The last episode of Simon Schama‘s BBC TV series A History of Britain, called “The Two Winstons”, follows the story of the Second World War and its immediate aftermath through the eyes of two very different Englishmen, George Orwell and Winston Churchill. Near the end of the programme Schama talks about the year 1948, when a very sick Orwell wrote his last major novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. I’ve reconstructed this section from the subtitles on my DVD of the series.
It starts with a direct quote from 1984
In our world there will be no love but the love of Big Brother, no laughter but that of triumph. No art, no science, no literature, no enjoyment, but always and only, Winston, there will be the thrill of power. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
It continues with the voice of Simon Schama as narrator
To clear his head of the static hum of postwar London, Orwell went as far away as he could without actually leaving Britain, to the very edge of the kingdom – the Hebridean island of Jura. No electricity, no telephone, post twice a week, maybe.
And it was here, in the remotest cottage he could find, typing in bed with the machine on his knees, knowing he hadn’t long to live, that Orwell concentrated on what mattered most to him, and to Britain – the fate of freedom in the age of superpowers. As Churchill issued his grim warnings, Orwell created a common or garden plain man’s Winston – Winston Smith. The year was 1948.
When we think of 1984, most of us think of the tyranny of drabness and mass obedience ruled by Big Brother, a world of doublespeak where war is peace and lies are truth. But Orwell’s last masterpiece is most powerful and most lyrical when it describes Winston’s resistance to dictatorship, a guerrilla action fought, not with guns and barricades, but by literally taking liberties, a walk in the country, an act of love, the singing of an old nursery rhyme.
Winston Smith did all these forbidden things, prompted by a dim memory of a time when they were absolutely normal. The last refuge of freedom against Big Brother is memory. The greatest horror of 1984 is the dictator’s attempt to wipe out history.
I thought of the last sentence when I read about Donald Trump’s plan to rewrite American history for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but that’s just one example amid the rise of authoritarian regimes around the world. In the context of the TV programme, Schama was making a case for the importance of history as a discipline, but there is something else important to say: we should not forget the past but, perhaps even more importantly, neither should we forget about the future we wanted to see. The present is not the future I hoped for when I was younger, even in 1984, but the story isn’t over yet.
In the Dark 