George Orwell on the Radio: His Works in Sound Drama and Documentary

Assessing the quality and representation of George Orwell on the radio - the radio dramas he wrote himself and the dramatizations and documentaries of his fiction and nonfiction by others - this book explores the interaction of Orwell's fiction, journalism and documentary writing with the audio/radio form. As Tim Crook shows, Orwell's participation in radio was informed by his own attentiveness to radio theory and the demands of actual production. Exploring how Orwell helped to shape the very form of radio drama and documentary, Crook begins with Orwell's own dramatizations of fiction and nonfiction for BBC radio during the Second World War. He follows Orwell's career and legacy through the dramatizations of Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty Four, and others of Orwell's works from 1947 through the present and examines the 'talk' and documentary output of BBC radio programming after Orwell's death in 1950. Crook concludes with a discussion of Orwell's literature as spoken word, analyzing the process of abridging Orwell's novels for the BBC's Book at Bedtime and evaluating how the writer's fiction and nonfiction endures in the sound dimension amidst the multi-media age CD, online media and iPad and tablet computers.

Tim Crook is Senior Lecturer in Media Law & Ethics at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.