Know Your English Literature Part. XII

The Charges of the Light Brigade: The poem written by Tennyson in 1854, about a disastrous British cavalry charge in the Crimean War, in which nearly 250 soldiers were killed or wounded. The poem contains the lines:

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

‘Big Brother is watching you’: Slogan appearing on posters throughout the fictional dictatorship in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty four. Big brother is the unseen head of the ruling party. The term ‘big brother’ is used to refer to any ruler or government seen as invading the privacy of individuals.

Brave New World: Futuristic novel by the British author Aldous Huxley published in 1932. It is set in a time when society is governed by science, and solutions have supposedly been found to all human problems. The main character is an intellectual, Bernard Marx, who in his travels encounters ‘Savages’ who still lead lives of unscientific disorder. Marx returns to London accompanied by a Savage, and the book ends with a debate on human freedom versus scientific determinism.

The book’s title comes from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest in which Miranda, brought up alone on an island, catches her first glimpse of a man other than her father. ‘O brave new world,’ she exclaims,’ that has such people in it.’

Anita Brookner: Novelist and former art historian who began writing fiction in middle age. Her heroines are innocent romantics who find to their cost that in life – unlike literature – there are few happy endings. Her novel Hotel du Lac won the 1984 Booker prize.