Do you really know what Orwellian means?

The millions of people using the term seem confident that they know and use it with equal confidence to signify often diametrically opposed meanings
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This time a month ago on the Reading group, we were hunting for the meaning of Kafkaesque. We were marvelling at its many applications and at just how often - and with how many subtle and not so subtle variations the term is used and abused. But now that George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four is our subject, I realise that musing over the meaning of Kafkaesque is little more than wandering in the foothills. It is a diversion for amateurs. It is a dipping of toes into shallow waters compared to the deep black plunge that is attempting to define Orwellian.

This is a word that no less an organ than the New York Times has declared the most widely used adjective derived from the name of a modern writer Its more common than Kafkaesque, Hemingwayesque and Dickensian put together. It even noses out the rival political reproach Machiavellian, which had a 500-year head start.

Books such as Milovan Djilas the New Class and George Orwells Animal Farm and 1984 became clandestine bestsellers, for they depicted in minute detail the communist methodology of taking over a nation. These three books did more to open the eyes of the blind, including mine, than any other form of expression.

1984 is no such thing. It is about communist totalitarianism.

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