
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is described as a novel but it is a semi-fictional insight about George Orwell’s life. In it he is referred to often as George but just as often by his real name, Eric Arthur Blair. Barnhill is where Orwell lived while he attempted to write ‘Nineteen eighty-four,’ his dystopian masterpiece. It is a farmhouse on the Scottish island of Jura, a mountainous bare land covered with large areas of blanket bog. Orwell’s book was mostly written in a dank bedroom on his old typewriter during a very difficult period when he was suffering from TB.
At the same time Orwell was convinced that the British government would eventually be taken over by a ruling autocracy that would be controlling every aspect of the peoples’ lives. His new book would be a warning of this. Norman Bissel’s writing includes this fear of Orwell’s and the fictional conversations with his close friends and colleagues allow you a certain amount of intrigue and suspicion of their authenticity. A long while ago I read the biography of Orwell by Bernard Crick and Bissel’s novel encouraged me to read it again. Having read Crick’s book I can recall being left then with feelings of similar curiosity and intrigue, allowing for the general situation of world politics immediately following World War 2.
I have read and enjoyed all of Orwell’s novels and his polemical works such as The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia. Encouraged by reading Barnhill maybe I will also take yet another look at the works of the great man.
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