James P. Bruce

ABOUT THIS BOOK

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell’s prophetic novel about a future “world of lies”, the author wrote about a device called the Memory Hole. It is used to alter any record, like a press report or a photograph, that no longer fits with the ever-changing policies of the Big Brother regime. 

Now imagine an historian trying to retrieve even a few of those records before they are doctored or destroyed.  Would it be possible to reverse what Orwell described as a "process of continuous alteration" of the past? 

Into the Memory Hole is much more than a nostalgia trip. It is an attempt to re-evaluate our assumptions about human history, to rediscover the shocking truth about our own “world of lies”.

EXTRACTS

"After learning that Robert Kennedy had been shot dead I went out into our back yard. Using a magnifying glass to focus the sun’s rays, I burnt the date, 6/6/68, into a wooden slat on the side of the garden shed." (page 8) 

"John Charles McQuaid is not an obvious candidate for the underdog in this story; far from it.  But that is what he turned out to be." (p. 32)

"In the Irish Constitution, why does the name of a female pagan goddess appear directly beneath a description of God?" (p. 160)

"When I arrived I found the door unlocked.  As I went in, my legs suddenly went from under me and I fell down. It was as if some invisible force had compelled me to drop to the floor." ( p. 197)

"The Jenner/Wilberforce alliance was one of the first examples of the collusion between medicine and politics that pushed vaccines relentlessly throughout the 19th century. " (p. 248)

GET YOUR COPY

Copies can be purchased here in hardcopy and digital formats. The book is available also through other online retailers, e.g.  Amazon.  A digital copy can be accessed for free here.