colleague of Orwell's during the last ten years of Orwell's life, found it interesting that "through Gordon Comstock Orwell expressed violent dislike of London's crowded life and mass advertising—a foretaste here of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell has Gordon reacting to a poster saying Corner Table Enjoys His Meal With Bovex in a manner already suggesting that of the later novel: "Gordon examined the thing with the intimacy of hatred.... Corner Table grins at you, seemingly optimistic, with a flash of false teeth. But what is behind the grin? Desolation, emptiness, prophecies of doom. —For can you not see [—] Behind that slick self-satisfaction, that tittering fat-bellied triviality, there's nothing but a frightful emptiness, a secret despair? And the reverberations of future wars." Catherine Blount pointed also to the theme of a London couple needing to go into the countryside in order to find a private place to have sex, which has a significant place in the plot of "Aspidistra" and which is taken up prominently in "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Orwell biographer D. J. Taylor said of Comstock, "Like Dorothy in A Clergyman’s Daughter and like Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, he rebels against the system and is ultimately swallowed up by it ... Like Winston Smith, he rebels, the rebellion fails, and he has to reach an accommodation with a world he’d previously disparaged". Film adaptation A film adaptation of the same name was released in 1997. It, was directed by Robert Bierman, and stars Richard E. Grant and Helena Bonham Carter. The film was released in North America and New Zealand under the alternative title of A Merry War. See also References External links 1936 British novels British novels adapted into films Novels set in London Novels by George Orwell Novels about writers Books about landlords