
George Orwell’s seminal work Nineteen Eighty-Four has defined the modern age and the perils of propaganda and totalitarianism. And yet Big Brother, Newspeak, the Thought Police and Room 101 – terms that have entered our vocabulary – were created in a remote farmhouse, on the island of Jura between 1946 and 1949. No previous biography has revealed so much about Orwell’s time on in Jura.
A former political journalist, Les Wilson is Creative Director of Caledonia TV. He has a novel and several history books to his name including Islay Voices, The Drowned and the Saved: How War Came to the Hebrides (winner of Scotland’s National Book Awards, history).