Big Brother Kindly Watching Orwell’s Gaff

This Is London runs a timely story to remind us of our surveillance society: there are 32 CCTV cameras within 200 yards of the flat 1984 author George Orwell lived in London. TIL says:

Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras – one for every 14 people in the country – and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.

Use of spy cameras in modern-day Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell’s fictional world, created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London.

On the wall outside his former residence – flat number 27B – where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.

PSFK recommends you buy and re-read 1984.

George Orwell, Big Brother is watching your house | News | This is London