Listen to audio teasers from George Orwell’s 1984
Listen to them being listened to. The hushed tones and the panic in their voices. The horror and forced joyfulness. The performative devotion to Big Brother. Audible’s all-star dramatisation of George Orwell’s 1984 takes one of the most vivid fictional nightmares of our age and turns it into something uniquely evocative.
Here are some clips from the new audio production, featuring a star-studded ensemble cast that includes Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy. As you listen to them, you’ll likely be struck by the similarities between the world that Orwell imagined and the world we live in today. So beneath the audio clips, we introduce a special series of articles exploring the insights that 1984 holds for life in 2024.
Composite: PR/Guardian Design
“You might rectify history in the Records Department”
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The Ministry of Truth – a clip from Audible's new dramatisation
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Take a tour of the Ministry of Truth, 1984’s vast disinformation factory that evokes today’s fake news operations – complete with content-generating machines that foreshadow AI content.
Voices: Andrew Garfield (Winston Smith), Ensemble (Various)
Composite: Stocksy United/Guardian Design
“I’ve been hoping for an opportunity to talk to you”
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Meeting O'Brien – a clip from Audible's new dramatisation
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This introduction to Party official O’Brien, played by Andrew Scott, is so bone-chillingly ominous it’s like listening to a serpent. Is it a friendly overture or a trap?
Voices: Andrew Garfield (Winston), Andrew Scott (O’Brien)
Composite: PR/Guardian Design
“A deliberate drowning of consciousness”
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War Is Peace – a clip from Audible's new dramatisation
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During the Two Minutes Hate – 1984’s ritualised outpouring of rage – Winston shows us just how captivating hatred can be. Likewise, it’s hard not to be captivated by the soothing voices of Big Brother, played by Tom Hardy, and O’Brien, played by Andrew Scott.
Voices: Andrew Garfield (Winston), Tom Hardy (Big Brother), Andrew Scott (O’Brien), Francesca Mills (Syme), Romesh Ranganathan (Parsons), Cynthia Erivo (Julia)
Composite: PR/Guardian Design
“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words”
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Newspeak Dictionary – a clip from Audible's new dramatisation
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In the canteen at the Ministry of Truth, Winston listens to an overzealous colleague explain how Newspeak, the Party’s officially condensed vocabulary, is designed to limit people’s capacity for thinking.
Voices: Andrew Garfield (Winston), Francesca Mills (Syme), Romesh Ranganathan (Parsons)
Composite: Stocksy United/Guardian Design
“Comrades, raise your victory gins. A toast to Big Brother”
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Hidden Danger – a clip from Audible's new dramatisation
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The ensemble cast duly performs enforced joyfulness after hearing that rations will be raised. Andrew Garfield captures how Winston just can’t pull off the pretence – and all the danger that that entails.
Voices: Andrew Garfield (Winston), Francesca Mills (Syme), Romesh Ranganathan (Parsons), Cynthia Erivo (Julia), Yasmin Mwanza (Party Announcer)
Composite: PR/Guardian Design
“Everyone changes during the hate”
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The Dark Haired Girl – a clip from Audible's new dramatisation
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The Party members psych themselves up for the Two Minutes Hate. By stoking hatred of enemies and traitors, the Party pacifies and controls people.
Voices: Andrew Garfield (Winston), Cynthia Erivo (Julia), Katie Leung (Ling), Alex Lawther (Ampleforth)
How the hellscape fits together
Introducing a series of articles about why we need Orwell’s classic more than ever
1984 as you have never experienced it before. If only that sentence was just a slogan. Or a sales pitch. Just a tagline for a haunting new dramatisation of our era’s defining work of fiction.
And if only 1984 was merely that – just a work of fiction and not some mystical post-truth prophecy. If only each generation didn’t have to experience a whole new aspect of the hellscape George Orwell foresaw.
Today, it’s the turn of the content-generating machines housed inside 1984’s Ministry of Truth. Their output of automatically-generated songs, novels and pornography is a logical extension of the Ministry’s vast apparatus for churning out fake news.
But whether it’s machine-generated content or the two-way telescreens that snoop on their audience, the prescience of 1984 is only part of the story. As well as being a crystal ball, 1984 is also a map. And not some surveillance-era satnav or geolocation tracker app, but the kind of map that shows you how the whole hellscape fits together.
1984 stars Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo and Andrew Scott. Photograph: Chris Skillern Photography/Kevin Tachman/Michael Wharley
The content-generating machines in the Ministry of Truth might seem spot-on in today’s world of deepfakes and generative AI, but their role in the bigger scheme of things is even more revealing. When the Party needs a fresh public frenzy of “fear, hatred and lunatic credulity”, the machines generate new baddies in old stories at pace and scale.
They are hate-generating machines, and they work in unison with other elements and concepts in 1984, such as the Thought Police, the censorship and mass surveillance, the unpersoning, the shrinking of language, the stirring up of nationalism as a means of control, and the “doublethink” that destabilises the whole notion of truth.
1984 gives us a more intuitive feel for how all these different elements are interdependent, as if designed to operate in service of each other. It can thereby give us a better feel for how the different parts of our own dystopia might interrelate – how to better navigate the fake news and disinformation, the jargon, the hate-stoking, and our own cognitive biases.
In the following articles, we look at how 1984 can give us a more instinctive grasp of the wider mechanics and post-truth machinations at play today:
Ignorance ain’t strength: what 1984 tells us about fake news – and how to resist it
Surveillance states: has living under watch changed the way we act, speak and think?
At war with ourselves: 1984 and the struggle against our digital demons
Trolling and digital pile-ons: have we created our own version of 1984’s Two Minutes Hate?
Disruptive thought leadership: how to decode Orwellian newspeak in 2024
Sonic immersion: rock star Matthew Bellamy and composer Ilan Eshkeri on their score and soundscape for the new dramatisation
‘Love is dangerous’: what 1984 can teach us about sex, pain and fear
Are you a blagger or in the Brotherhood? Take our quiz to test your knowledge of Orwell’s dystopian classic
From Hollywood to your headphones: meet the star-studded cast of Audible’s new dramatisation
Audible’s new dramatisation of George Orwell’s classic tale stars Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy, with an original score by Matthew Bellamy and Ilan Eshkeri. Listen now. Subscription required. See audible.co.uk for terms.
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