Victory Mansions are old flats, built in 1930 or thereabouts, and are falling to pieces. The plaster flakes constantly from ceilings and walls, the pipes burst in every hard frost, the roof leaks whenever there is snow, and the heating system is usually running at half steam when it is not closed down altogether from motives of economy.

The dingy lobby smells of boiled cabbage and old rag mats.

At one end of it a colored poster, too large for indoor display, has been tacked to the wall. It depicts simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption says.