You are about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about what goes into making one.

I'm Sadata Sese, an assistant commissioner of podcasts for BBC Sounds.

I pull a lot of levers to support a diverse range of podcasts on all sorts of subjects,

relationships, identity, comedy, even one that mixes poetry, music and inner city life.

So one day I'll be helping host develop their ideas, the next fact-checking, a feature,

and the next looking at how a podcast connects with its audience, and maybe that's you.

So if you like this podcast, check out some others on BBC Sounds.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

To paraphrase the literary critic Raymond Williams, George Orwell was the most successful

character Eric Arthur Blair ever created. And while Blair lived relatively briefly, from

2003 to 1950, his better-known pseudonym remains very present today.

It's 75 years since George Orwell completed his iconic final work, 1984, the novel that introduced now commonplace phrases like Big Brother and Doublethink into the culture.

Indeed, the infamous room 101 in the Ministry of Love

was supposedly named for a windowless room right here in BBC Broadcasting House, where Orwell

worked during the Second World War. So not dissimilar to the studio I'm currently sitting in,

though hopefully not a place of such agonising interrogation for today's guests. All of them

have written books that reframe or re-examine

Orwell's life and work in unique ways. They are Anna Funder, author of Wifftom, which shines a

light on Orwell's sometimes forgotten first wife, Eileen, Adam Biles, who has written a sequel to Animal Farm,

and Sandra Newman, whose novel Julia gives his classic dystopia a feminist twist.

Welcome to you all.

Thank you.

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