British author and essayist George Orwell shot to fame with two iconic novels: the anti-Stalinist satire Animal Farm and the dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four. Within years of his death in 1950, the CIA was bankrolling movies of both to use as global Cold War propaganda. Orwell’s depiction of a Big Brother police state, written as a warning to humanity, fixated the media in the real 1980s. Now, as fears of an electronic surveillance society mount, political events in America have made him a hot property in Hollywood.
After years of research and dozens of candid interviews with actors, writers, directors and producers, journalist David Ryan has produced the first authoritative study of Orwell on film and television. Beginning with a CBS play that mirrored the McCarthy witch hunts of the early fifties, he looks in detail at 20 wide-ranging productions, covering every adaptation, major documentary and biopic. Littered with eye-opening anecdotes, and featuring a detailed appraisal of two lost BBC dramatizations from 1965, this unique reference work shows what popular culture has made-and continues to make-of a literary genius whose work has never seemed more relevant.