The Thought Police, doublethink, Newspeak, Big Brother - '1984' itself: these terms and concepts are central to our thinking about freedom and its suppression. Yet they were newly created by George Orwell in 1949 as he conjured his dystopian vision of a totalitarian world. The principal characters are ordinary human beings like ourselves: Winston Smith and Julia, whose love is also an act of rebellion against the Party. Opposing them are the massed powers of the state. No-one is free from surveillance; the 'truth' is constantly altered; and Big Brother controls all. Even the simple act of keeping a diary is punishable by death. In Winston's battle to keep his freedom of thought, his powerful adversary O'Brien uses fear and pain to enter his very thought processes. Does 2+2=4? Or is it 5? We find out in Room 101. Nineteen Eighty-Four was Orwell's last novel; but the world he created is always with us, as we find within it a mirror for our own times and a warning for the future.