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You could be forgiven for thinking that brutal dictatorships were a thing of the past. After all, we have defeated Hitler. So why does writer George Orwell foresee a near-future even more horrific than the one set out by the Nazi's?

While the rest of Britain joyously rebuilds our great nation, Orwell is predicting a dark and nightmarish world filled with perpetual war. He sees England becoming a land where freedom is all but an illusion and an all-seeing, all-hearing 'Big Brother' spies on our every move.

Most incredulously of all, Orwell suggests that this new dictatorship will use our own television sets to spy on us!

Despite the fact the men of Britain have just fought the greatest evil the world has ever seen, Orwell refuses to be optimistic. He imagines we will give up everything we fought for. He supposes that by 1984, we will be happy to be watched while we sleep, eat, drink and go to the lavatory. The idea is nothing short of preposterous. It flies in the face of everything English to suppose that anybody would surrender to such an indignity.

But rest easy, ladies and gentlemen of Britain. George Orwell's predictions are nothing but a fiction from his nightmarish new novel, 1984. Televisions that watch us and an omnipotent 'Big Brother' will never visit this fair land. Orwell is indeed a great writer of fiction, but he does not have the power of foresight.