Photo of CCTV camera outside George Orwell’s home is edited

A photo appearing to show a CCTV camera outside the former home of George Orwell has been edited. 

The image shows a large camera with a sign saying “24 hour CCTV recording in operation” in front of a house featuring a plaque that notes “George Orwell 1903-1950 novelist and political essayist lived here”. 

George Orwell is perhaps best known for his novel ‘1984’, in which citizens of a totalitarian state are subject to mass surveillance. 

This photo was shared on social media as early as 2012, and has recently circulated on both Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) with a caption saying: “They are trolling George Orwell's ghost.”

However, the image has been edited—it’s part of a series called ‘Restyles of the Dead and Famous’ by photographer Steve Ullathorne, which was exhibited in London in January 2010. 

Other images in the series include a bulldog smoking a cigar outside the former home of Sir Winston Churchill, a car littered with bullet-holes by James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s, and Peter Pan’s shadow on the wall of author Sir James Barrie’s. 

While the photo does feature George Orwell’s genuine former residence at 22 Portobello Road, Notting Hill, multiple Google Street View images from between August 2008 and June 2022 show no such CCTV camera positioned outside the property.

However, Portobello Road was one of four high streets in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea to be selected for new public space CCTV cameras in 2020. There were reportedly 130 fixed and deployable CCTV cameras in the borough as of March 2023, which had increased from 58 cameras in 2020.

This isn’t the first time we’ve fact checked convincing images that have actually been edited—for example carrots sold in Tesco were not grown in Chernobyl, and a photo doesn’t show Rishi Sunak serving a foamy pint. You can read our blogs about how to spot misleading images here and misleading videos here.