Ernest Bramah

THE SECRET OF THE LEAGUE (Political Dystopia): The Classic That Inspired Orwell's 1984 Ernest Bramah

A secret organization of upper class dissenters, called The League, is not happy with their weak government and wants to overthrow it. In a clever plan they bring about a civil war in Britain by manipulating the coal strike with foreign help and plant a fascist regime in its place. What comes about is a total breakdown giving an accurate prediction of the rise of Fascism, as George Orwell famously noted. Superficially the novel (also alternately known as What Might Have Been) seems like it is promoting the cause of The League but it is in fact a bleary take on what might end up happening if such a thing comes to pass when the government is overtaken by the conservatives. Who becomes a hero and who becomes a villain is only a matter of seizing absolute power! In fact Orwell credited this novel as his inspiration behind his own successful dystopian classic 1984. Ernest Bramah (1868-1942) was an English author and a recluse who wrote the famous Kai Lung and Max Carrados series. Interestingly Bramah's humorous works were ranked with Jerome K Jerome and W. W. Jacobs, his detective stories with Conan Doyle, his politico-science fiction with H. G. Wells and his supernatural stories with Algernon Blackwood.