Except that for 1984 the answer is well known because the title of the book is the partial reversal of the year it was written in so the logical question is 'what year was it written in', rather than about the publishing date.

English of course.

Born in Germany to a Scottish father and a Swiss mother.

Well, excuse me for wanting some accuracy in the use of language and education. No wonder our education system is in the toilet if getting the correct date for historical events is just not important.

When was the battle of Hastings fought. 1065. That'll do son, near enough, give him a GCSE.

What's 1 + 1? 3. Close enough son, give him a GCSE.

Exactly apparently Ian Fleming liked Sean Connery's portrayal so much he gave him a Scottish background, as can be seen in Skyfall

He's never been English

This ^

The whole point is that Orwell wrote it in 1948 and flipped the last two numbers of the date. It's just one of those trivia facts.

Therefore to have someone connected with the show state that it was written in 1949 just grates.

I know in the grand scheme of things it's not important (very much like this show), but it bugged me when I heard Super Cassandra say it, as the whole 1984/1948 thing is fairly well known.

1984 may be in reference to "End of the Century, 1984," a Poem by Eileen O'Shaughnessy, Orwell's wife.

Silly Cassandra

“End of the Century, 1984” by Eileen O'Shaughnessy (Orwell's wife)

Death

Synthetic winds have blown away
Material dust, but this one room
Rebukes the constant violet ray
And dustless sheds a dusty gloom.
Wrecked on the outmoded past
Lie North and Hillard, Virgil, Horace,
Shakespeare's bones are quiet at last,
Dead as Yeats or William Morris.
Have not the inmates earned their rest?
A hundred circles traversed they
Complaining of the classic quest
And, each inevitable day,
Illogically trying to place
A ball within an empty space.



Birth

Every loss is now a gain
For every chance must follow reason.
A crystal palace meets the rain
That falls at its appointed season.
No book disturbs the lucid line
For sun-bronzed scholars tune their thought
To Telepathic Station 9
From which they know just what they ought:
The useful sciences; the arts
Of telesalesmanship and Spanish
As registered in Western parts;
Mental cremation that shall banish
Relics, philosophies and colds --
Manana-minded ten-year-olds.



The Phoenix

Worlds have died that they may live,
May plume again their fairest feathers
And in their clearest songs may give
Welcome to all spontaneous weathers.
Bacon's colleague is called Einstein,
Huxley shares Platonic food,
Violet rays are only sunshine
Christened in the modern mood,
In this house if in no other
Past and future may agree,
Each herself, but each the other
In a curious harmony,
Finding both a proper place
In the silken gown's embrace.

written in (1934)

WHAT!!!??? That is truly shocking, I don't think my flabber has ever been so gasted,
EH? nooooo, I'm not shocked about the mix up in the dates, I am shocked that people actually LISTEN to her!!!
I am no longer a BB fan, BUT, being a 'modern' man I quite willingly sit through it with the missus,
but as I am the male, I obviously have control of the remote, and I am as quick as lightening, as soon as I hear the words "coming up after the break" that mute button gets hit, and it doesn't get 'un-hit until that bloody woman has gone from the screen, I was surprised to hear that she's American, as I have never heard her voice,

Ha ha ha I agree and shout it at her every time she says it

How do we know that nothing, not one word, of the book was written in 1949 too?
He may have started it in 1948 but I'd go so far as to say, if it was 1st published in 1949 then it was being written, re-written and edited up to that moment.

On 4 December 1948, he sent the final manuscript to the publisher Secker and Warburg and Nineteen Eighty-Four was published on 8 June 1949

cut and paste from wiki

Actually, he started writing it in 1947 and sent the draft manuscript to the publishers in December 1948. It was published in 1949, but as legend has it, the title of the book was arrived at by reversing the 4 and the 8 of the year when it was finished.

LOL fair enough, my point was to say it is a silly argument over something that is often done. IE that people count the year it was published as the year it was written. It's only in a case like this, where the tile and year have a significance in themselves, that people worry about the issue.

I feel bad I've never read it. I always confuse 1984 with War of the Worlds by HG Wells, so I always thought 1984 was written before 1900.

yup pedantic

true she says whats writen for her

As I've pointed out on a couple of other threads on the same topic.
During the World Cup one of her lines was
"England, do that thing you did in 1956"

Well obviously England won the World Cup in 1966 not 1956. So either the guy that writes her scripts is ignorant, or they've put in these deliberate errors to show that Cassandra doesn't always know what she is talking about. Perhaps to add to her charm?

but thats not accurate either because he wrote it from '47 - '48 .

its quite commonly accepted to say a book was written in the year it was published

I'm just happy for the original inspiration for the show to be mentioned at all in the adverts surrounding it!

In terms of the accuracy, the lack of poetry bothers me more. I obviously knew Nineteen Eighty-Four was written a long time before 1984, but I didn't know precisely when, though I knew it was around the middle of the century. But if you were going to guess, 1948 makes obvious sense. And when someone says 1949, you do naturally think "Really? Isn't it 1948???"

So what I'm basically saying is that the poetry of a thing is more important than facts of it. Aye, I reckon so.

Indeed, Tolkien's been an absolutely prolific writer since his death over forty years ago. He's been a bit rude to snub the awards ceremonies though