Airstrip One

The world of 1984 - Airstrip One (formerly Britain) is on the edge of Oceania's border with Eurasia

Airstrip One is a province of Oceania in George Orwell's futuristic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four that acts as the primary setting. It is located in what "had been called England or Britain", and is the home of the main characters of the book, including its protagonist, Winston Smith.

Even the names of countries, and their shapes on the map, had been different. Airstrip One, for instance, had not been so called in those days: it had been called England, or Britain, though London, he felt fairly certain, had always been called London.

In the novel, Britain is a province within the superpower Oceania which roughly corresponds to the modern day continents of Americas, Southern Africa and Oceania (as explained in chapter 3 of Goldstein's Book).

Eurasia comprises the whole of the European part of the European and Asiatic landmass, from Portugal to the Bering Strait. Oceania comprises the Americas, the Atlantic islands including the British Isles, Australia and the Southern portion of Africa. Eastasia, smaller than the others and with a less definite western frontier, comprises China and the countries to the south of it, the Japanese islands and a large but fluctuating portion of Manchuria, Mongolia and Tibet.

References

• Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. A novel. London: Secker & Warburg.