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Dominic Sandbrook

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23
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2026-03-29
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2026-03-29
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  1. “So, I hope you enjoyed that clip from our episode on 1984. To hear more, if you want to hear more, and I hope you do, then please search for the book club wherever you get your podcasts.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Yeah, exactly. But also the way in which This is the point at which Stalin's show trials are being reported. So people like Krigorizanoviev or Lev Kamenev or Nikolai Bukarin, the so-called old Bolsheviks, they are being dragged in front of the courts in Moscow in these terrible show trials. And the shadow of the show trials hangs over 1984 and there's three characters, Aaronson, Jones and Rutherford. In the book, who are basically like the old Bolsheviks of Airstrip 1 and the same thing, exactly the same thing happens to them.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “And on the other, the Orthodox communists. And the Orthodox kind of Stalinist communists basically stamp on these other militias. And Orwell is really shocked by this. He's shocked by Stalinism. He's shocked by the experience of kind of truth and language being threatened by propaganda and by kind of totalitarian orthodoxy. And that stays with him politically forever. And that gives him his obsession, I think, with totalitarianism and with Stalinism.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Anyway, talking about asking them to marry him, he does get married in 1936 to Eileen Shaughnessy, who is Oxford educated and basically becomes his typist. And then at the end of 1936, the defining political event it was life. He goes off to the Spanish Civil War. Before then, I think Orle had, I mean, he'd be interested in politics, but he hadn't been fundamentally political. And the Spanish Civil War changes that. He volunteers for the Republicans, the left-wing forces. He joins a militia called the Pum. But what really is so formative is that the left-wing forces in Spain are fighting among themselves. So there's a rift in Barcelona where he's been very excited and happy. There's a big rift between, on the one hand, all these different kind of sectarian militias like the Pume.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I can't believe that people think that. Well, I can believe that people think it, but I think they're deluded. I mean, one of the great criticisms of Orwell Now is that Orwell, you know, no woman is safer Orwell. He's the sort of pouring feebly at them or he's asking them to marry him.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “The common theme of those books is there's a central character who's trapped by his time, so he feels it's very claustrophobic and the character tries to escape and basically fails. So this is a constant theme for Orwell. And I think that reflects, I mean, obviously the theme of 1984, and I think that reflects his personality. He's shaped very much by the establishment, but also he's quite thoughtful, he's spiky, he's awkward, he's kind of a man apart. He likes to see himself as a man apart. Anyway, the paradox is on the one hand he's quite anti-authority, anti-establishment, but on the other... Know he's very loyal to his old school friends, so the people at his bedside when he was dying were all old Etonians. They were the people he kept in touch with all his life.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “No, not at all. I think he finds it very awkward. He wrote brilliantly, by the way, about his time in Burma. There's a brilliant essay about shooting an elephant and everyone's sort of staring at him and the sort of pressure that he felt as the representative of imperial authority surrounded by all these people whose lives he didn't really understand.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Exactly. So he wasn't a great star at Eton. His parents thought that he probably wouldn't win a scholarship to university and they didn't have the money to send him. So they applied for him to join the Indian imperial police, which he does. He passes the exam. He goes off to Burma. And some of his biographers see Burma as formative for him because, of course, Burma, he has an experience of repression and punishment and surveillance, but he's on the other side of that equation because he's working for the authorities.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Into scholarship to prep school, and then another scholarship to Eton, a King's scholarship to Eton, where he was taught French by Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Okay. So the funny thing about Orwell is Orwell is renowned for his clarity and his honesty and his sympathy for the underdog and his hostility to authority. But there's an irony here because he's a son of empire, he's a son of privilege, and he's a former imperial policeman who writes under a name not his own. So his name is actually Eric Arthur Blair. So he's born in Bengal in 1903. His father was in the Indian Civil Service and he basically worked on the export of opium. His family, interestingly, he describes them famously as lower upper middle class. Owwell was fascinated by class. Basically because his family were gentle but they didn't have the money to sustain it. So that meant that there was always a huge or a widening gap between their expectations and their capacity to pay for them. And that meant they're all well reflected a lot about the sort of social caste and so on. He's a very bright boy.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “So I love Georgia well Man, as much as the books, his lodestar for me for lots of, as he is for many writers, I once made a TV program about Britain in the early Cold War that touched on 1984. And actually, when I was, I mean, you were good enough to read one of my more inflammatory columns. The title of one of my more inflammatory columns, I mean, I probably in my days as a columnist for Britain's best loved mid-market newspaper. Must have quoted from George Orwell about 6,000 times. He's one of those writers that basically, whenever you run out of ideas and you're groping desperately for a”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “And specifically in its most feared room, which is room 101, and we'll come back to what happens in room 101. So 1984, it's a dystopian political warning. It is a doomed love story. It's a horror story. It's a work of science fiction. It is a reflection on the importance of history, a warning about the corruption of language. But more than any of those things, I mean that all you know, those are aspects of it, but at bottom, it is a really gripping and terrifying story. I mean, it is a brilliant read. My son read it. Was about 11 or 12, and he absolutely, I mean, he didn't care about any of those things. Loved it as a gripping story.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “No, big spoiler alert. It doesn't end well. So, as lots of readers will know they're arrested, Winston ends up in the dreaded ministry of love.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “So, without further ado, here for you all is a clip from our episode of the book club that Tabby and I did about George Orwell's 1984, and we hope you enjoy it.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “This is Restors Politics Bingo, I know, but this is Laporis Johnson and his new hospitals, isn't it? Just make up a stat. And people will believe it and people will repeat it sticks in their minds.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “What will they believe, and what will AI tell them? What will they know is the truth? That's quite a chilling thing, I think.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “You think that what we have now, though, is a media landscape, a sort of political landscape in which you're capable of creating a gigantic echo chamber now in which actually people come to, and it's not just the echo chamber, but it's also that people simply don't, it's impossible for people to identify where the truth lies. So when Trump says relentlessly, I actually was cheated in that previous election in 2020. And even though you and I know that he wasn't and that he lost Fair and Square, but he says it so relentlessly and the media ecosystem that he's created, so not just truth, social, but X and his loyalty channels and whatnot, they pump that message out. And you just, I just wonder, somebody in 10 years time, you know, somebody who's a child now who wants to look into it.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Believe deep down in what they're saying, or when the cameras are off, do they walk away and do they say, well, actually, you know, I'm just being cynical, I'm just doing this for personal advancements. And I don't really believe it. It's hard to know, though, isn't it? Because the first people they convince with their lives are themselves, don't you think? That people often fool themselves a little bit”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Agree completely. So I think the core of this is the idea of truth, and is there such a thing as identifiable, verifiable truth? And in 1984, you may remember that one of the ways in which they break Winston Smith, when they've, you know, Winston is the main character who's tried to rebel and they've taken him into room 101. And one of the things they basically get him to do, they want him not just to say that 2 plus 2 equals 5, but they want him at some level to believe it. And so there's a line that goes from Stalin's show trials in the 30s. He broke like the old Bolsheviks, the people who'd been at his side in the 1910s and 1920s. They came out and they confessed that they had been plotting against him and working with the Allied powers, even when they hadn't. And it's always been a question, did they actually believe it themselves? And I agree with you that you now look at people, particularly in America, and you think to yourself, do they believe, you know, Trump spokesman or whatever, or JD Vance or Rubio or whoever, do they actually...”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “And the way in which ever since his first term, the Heinz administration will 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.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I think what's so interesting to me is that I don't know whether you would agree with this it's obviously you read it massively a book of its time so shaped in the Second World War and the Cold War and what all I was writing about is the totalitarianism of Stalin in particular but as you say you look at the world now so 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 the Trumpian stuff, you know, Trump's use of social media.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “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.”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “So it's a show that I do with my producer on the Restis History, who's called Tabitha Siret. And we always chat about books and what we're reading, our favorite novels. And we did a miniseries together on the Rest It's History for Rest's History Club members, where we talked about some of our favorite 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?”

    2026-03-29 · The Rest Is Politics · Nineteen Eighty-Four: Dominic Sandbrook on Big Brother, Surveillance, and Fear (The Book Club) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source