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Hi there, is Alastair here. Welcome to The Restis Politics. And today we've got a very special guest from our StableMate podcast. The Rest is History. Dominic Sanbrook, welcome. Thank you, Alastair. It's nice to be on a proper professional podcast for once.

Ah, it's not always you say that. Now, Dominic, you are here to discuss your new show, and it's called The Book Club.

Tell us about it. So it's a show that I do with my producer on the Restis History, who's

called Tabitha Siret, and we always chat about books and what we're reading, our favorite novels.

And we did a mini-series together on The Restis History for Restis History Club members, where we talked about some of our favourite books. The listeners liked it amazingly, so we decided to launch it as a standalone show. We've done four or five episodes, and we recently did an episode that might appeal to you, Alistair, because it's on a very political book. It's actually last week's episode, and it was George Orwell's 1984,

which I think you read when you were at school. Is that right? I think I read it in 1974.

So I read 1984 in 1974. I think that's why I remember it. And my God, yeah, it is so relevant.

It is so relevant. When I look at what's happening in the States right now, whether you look at

ice and you think, oh, this is all a bit big brotherish, you look at the way that Trump communicates

and you're tempted to say this is all a bit Orwellian. I mean, Orwell and Orwell and 1984 have entered the language even for people who have never read that book.

Yeah, we were talking about this on the show, actually.

It's such an interesting thing because there aren't many books that embed themselves in the imagination so successfully.

And a lot of the concepts that Orwell comes up with, so the idea of Britain is Airstrip 1,

the idea of double think.

So in other words, having two ideas in your head at once and one of them you know is a lie,

but you force yourself to believe it anyway.

The thing about Big Brother, the thing about Room 101.

I think what's so interesting to me is that, I don't know whether you would agree with this,

is that it's obviously you read it.

It's a massively a book of its time.

So shaped in the Second World War and the Cold War.

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