 Before I put 1984 to bed here, I wanted to talk about this gloriously inappropriate cover on this particular edition that I own. When I bought this 25 or 30 years ago, of course, it was the cover that caught my eye, and that's why I picked it up. I did a double-take when I saw it on the shelf, and I was like, really? This is so contrary to the spirit of the book. I'm sure this painting was done at the publisher's instruction trying to make it look like one of the sexy men's adventure novels that were popular at the time. When I took this book out of the plastic bag for this review, by the way, the cover cracked off, and the book broke into pieces. I'm sorry to say, but what are you going to do? I mean, old books. This is a 1950 edition 13th printing. I don't know if every printing of this signet speciality was cheap paperback novels, so I imagine this was probably the original 1950 cover. But 1950, the book was published first in 1948 and or will died in 1950, so immediately American publishers were giving it the inappropriate sexy American cover. I mean, I have to think that the artists who painted this knew better. The publisher had to be telling him or her, you know, there's a girl in the book, isn't there? So put the girl on the cover, make her sexy, give her a plunging neckline. The artist did it and also gave this armored security guard an equally ridiculous plunging neckline. Yeah, I have to think the artist knew what he or she was doing. I wish I knew who painted this. If anybody knows, tell me and go read 1984 if you haven't.