Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club)
episodePreviously titled “Nineteen Eighty-Four: Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club)” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 4, 2026
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thanks for listening to The Rest Is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com.
Hi there, it's Alastair here. Welcome to The Rest Is Politics. And today we've got a very special guest from our stablemate podcast, The Rest Is History. Dominic Sandbrook, welcome.
Thank you, Alastair. It's nice to be on a proper professional podcast for once.
Ah, not always you say that. Now, Dominic, you are here to discuss your new show, and it's called The Book Club. Tell us about it.
So it's a show that I do with my producer on The Rest Is History, who's called Tabitha Syrett. And we always chat about books and what we're reading, our favourite novels. And we did a mini-series together on The Rest Is History for Rest Is History Club members. And we did a mini-series together on The Rest Is History for Rest Is History Club members. where we talked about some of our favourite books. The listeners liked it amazingly, so we decided to launch it as a standalone show. We've done four or five episodes, and we recently did an episode that might appeal to you, Alistair, because it's on a very political book. It's actually last week's episode, and it was George Orwell's 1984, which I think you read when you were at school.
Is that right?
I think I read it in 1974. Okay. So I read 1984 and 1974. I think that's why I remember it. And my God, yeah, it's so relevant. It is so relevant. When I look at what's happening in the States right now, whether you, you know, you look at ICE and you think, oh, this is all a bit big brotherish. You look at the way that Trump communicates and you're tempted to say this is all a bit Orwellian. I mean, Orwell, and Orwellian and 1984 have entered the language even for people who have never read that book.
Yeah, we were talking about this on the show actually. It's such an interesting thing because there aren't many books that embed themselves in the imagination so successfully. And a lot of the concepts that Orwell comes up with, so the idea of Britain as airstrip one, the idea of double think. So in other words, having two ideas in your head at once and one of them you know is a lie, but you force yourself to believe it anyway. The thing about Big Brother, the thing about Room 101. I think what's so interesting to me is that, I don't know whether you would agree with this, is that it's obviously, you read it, it's massively a book of its time. So shaped in the Second World War and the Cold War. And what Orwell's writing about is the totalitarianism of Stalin in particular.
But as you say, you look at the world now. So his idea that you're being observed through your telescreen And it's checking every detail of your facial reactions and whatnot. And people are watching you the whole time. And the party, the sort of propaganda ministry is pumping out this stuff. You know, war is peace. Freedom is slavery that people must at some level know is not true. But they're going along with it anyway. It does feel very relevant, doesn't it? And I think that the Trumpian stuff, Trump's use of social media and the way in which ever since his first term, that he and his administration would tell people things that everybody in the room knew were untrue. And yet the MAGA movement kind of forced themselves to believe it.
It is pretty chilling, actually.
What was the phrase about not believing your own eyes? Because that's kind of where I felt we were in Minnesota. Yeah. I actually felt it. We were talking on the podcast this week about Trump's reaction to the death of Robert Mueller. So there's Robert Mueller. Robert Mueller said, you know, he did the Russia investigation, the Russia hoax, as Trump called it. He dies. And Trump, I mean, social media didn't exist when Orwell was writing. It didn't exist in 1984. But his first instinct and his reaction is to put out a post saying, I'm glad he's dead. It means nobody else can be hurt. Now, that's horrible, but it's very kind of on message, on brand for Trump.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:04
2
Why is George Orwell's 1984 still relevant today?
5:04–9:19
3
What are the main themes of surveillance and control in 1984?
9:19–9:41
4
How does Big Brother symbolize totalitarianism in the novel?
9:41–12:16
5
What parallels can be drawn between 1984 and modern politics?
12:16–24:18
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Rest Is Politics
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