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”.
"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. 106)
"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)
"Jesus’ very existence was such a reproach to the “ruler of this world” that, if Jesus himself could not be erased completely, his life would have to be misrepresented and distorted." (p. 293)
Copies can be purchased here. It will be available also through the usual online retailers very soon.
© Copyright 2019-2023
'Sunset in Glendalough', courtesy of Giuseppe Milo at Milo Photography.
'Shield of Arms of Ireland', Sodacan.This W3C-unspecified vector image was created with Inkscape. [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]