Nineteen Eighty-Four: Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club)

Alastair Campbell· Host0:00

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. [upbeat music] 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.

Dominic Sandbrook· Guest0:27

Thank you, Alastair. It's nice to be on a proper professional podcast for once.

Alastair Campbell· Host0:31

Aw. It's not always you say that. [laughs] Now, Dominic, you, you are here to discuss your new show, and it's called The Book Club. Tell us about it.

Dominic Sandbrook· Guest0:40

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 favorite novels, and we did a miniseries together on The Rest Is History for Rest Is History Club members, where we talked about some of our favorite books. Uh, 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, Alastair, 'cause 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?

Alastair Campbell· Host1:13

I think I read it in 1974. So I read 1984 in 1974. I think that's why I remember it, and my God, yeah, it is so relevant. It is so relevant. When I look at what's happening in the States right now, whether you've, you know, you look at ICE and you